Can someone explain asp.net routing syntax to me? - asp.net

I am dealing with this code in a Web Forms scenario:
public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
{
Route r = new Route("{*url}", new MyRouteHandler());
routes.Add(r);
routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");
routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.gif/{*pathInfo}");
}
Firstly, can anyone tell me where the defintion of {*pathInfo} is?
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc668201.aspx#url_patterns doesn't really define it. Does:
routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");
Match
/c/xyz.axd and
/b/c/xyz.axd and
/a/b/c/xyz.axd
Whereas
routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd");
Only matches
/xyz.axd
Secondly, in:
{*url}
What does * mean? And what does the expression as a whole mean. Is there somewhere this is clearly explained?
Thirdly, is there a particular order I need to add these expressions to correctly ignore routes? I know {*url} is some kind of catchall, should the IgnoreRoutes come before or after it eg
routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");
routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.gif/{*pathInfo}");
Route r = new Route("{*url}", new MyRouteHandler());
routes.Add(r);

My 2 cents:
A route is not regex. It is simply variable and static components that make up a route, separated by segments (identified by a slash). There's one special symbol, the asterisk in the last variable, which means from here on, ignore the segment-separator -- the slash. So,
{*url}
is the simplest route, because it means take the entire URL, put it into the variable 'url', and pass that to the page associated with that route.
{controller}/{action}/{id}
puts everything in the first segment -- up to the first slash -- into the variable 'controller', puts everything between the first and second / into the variable 'action', and everything between the second and third slash (or the end) into the variable 'id'. those variables are then passed into the associated page.
{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}
here, put the info before .axd/ (and it can't have any slashes!) into 'resource', and put everything after the first / into 'pathInfo'. Since this is typically an ignoreRoute, so instead of passing it to the page associated, it is handled by the StopHandler, which means that routing won't deal with it, and it is instead handled by the non-routing HttpHandler.
As bleevo says, routes are executed in order they're added to the collection. so IgnoreRoute s have to be added before the generic route is handled.
Here's the horse's mouth: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc668201.aspx
Specific to your example, I would put the IgnoreRoute lines above your Route addition, because your route is effectively a catch-all. Also, remember that the .gif ignore will only be honoured if the gif is in the root directory.

pathinfo is just a label for a bucket. So for instance {*pathinfo} says put everything after {resource}.axd/ into pathinfo.
The routes are executing in the order you place them in the routes table, so if your very first route is a catch all the rest will never execute.

Related

Translated Symfony routes with multiple parameters

As the title suggests, I'm using Symfony in conjunction with the JMSTranslationBundle and JMSI18nBundle in order to serve translated routes.
Here's my currently configured route:
/{location}/{profession}/{specialty}
So the route
/berlin/arzt/allgemein
is successfully pushed to the correct controller and action.
The JMSI18nBundle is automagically prefixing my English routes with /en/. This works for every other route with a non-dynamic component (such as /profile/{slug}/). This DOES NOT work, however, when using the English version of the above example. i.e.
/en/berlin/doctor/general
I'm guessing the router is not reading this properly as the English version of the normal route, and instead tries to assign location = en, profession = berlin, etc, which is obviously incorrect.
I've tried defining optional parameters, more complicated regexes, and trailing slashes for the translation (all with cache flushes in between). None of this works. What DOES work, is inserting a pointless non-dynamic component, i.e. /en/s/berlin/doctor/general etc
As a part of the business requirements, we don't want this additional pointless non-dynamic URL component.
So, my question is: how can I use (prefixed) translatable URLs in Symfony that contain nothing but dynamic fields?
Your help is greatly appreciated!
Solved:
As is the norm with Friday-afternoon problems, I found I had a $ inside my translated route rule, like so:
/{location}/{$profession}/{specialty}
Removing it and flushing the cache resulted in the route working.
tl;dr - PEBKAC

ASP.NET URL Routing with wildcard

I have a CMS system that I am using Routing to get the page name. I have the need to have unlimited values (sub directories, product names, different localizations) between the first item and the last item (page name).
For example:
/Products/Computers/ComputerType1/
And
/Productos/Ordenadores/ComputerType1/
Where ComputerType1 is the page name.
routes.Add(new Route("{*route}/{pageName}", routeHandler));
I cannot find a way to make the middle part ({*route}) of the route to be the wildcard so that unlimited number of sub directories can be put in front of the page name. Currently I have only been able to get around this with having a default wildcard route such as:
routes.Add(new Route("{*route}", routeHandler));
to catch everything. However, the wildcard seems to also be letting in gif urls even thou I have it specified as ignore above in the route code as:
routes.Ignore("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");
routes.Ignore("{resource}.asmx/{*pathInfo}");
routes.Ignore("{resource}.ashx/{*pathInfo}");
routes.Ignore("{resource}.gif/{*pathInfo}");
routes.Ignore("{resource}.png/{*pathInfo}");
routes.Ignore("{resource}.jpg/{*pathInfo}");
routes.Ignore("{resource}.ico/{*pathInfo}");
routes.Ignore("{resource}.pdf/{*pathInfo}");
routes.Ignore("{resource}.css/{*pathInfo}");
routes.Ignore("{resource}.js/{*pathInfo}");
Is there a better way of doing this? Should this be handled thru a custom route handler?
yes you should create a route handler for cases like these
simple create a class and derive it from RouteBase
override the GetRouteData method
in this method you can access the current httpcontext and thus you can access the requested URL
so u can route accordingly.
for more info on custom routes visit this link
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/299531/Custom-routes-for-MVC-Application

Url Routing Question multiple departments

I want my url to look like this www.website.com/browse/computers/consoles/playstation-3/en-NZ.aspx. The part where it starts - browse which I guess is my controller - computers/consoles/playstation-3 is my action and - en-NZ.aspx is the page I want to name it. My three questions are how do you set up the action part when there are multiple departments and what is the regular expression for en-NZ for the CultureInfo is it /\{2, [a-z]}\-\{2, [A-Z]} I also need that expression to have it for two lower case letters for turkey e.g tr wich is the only language code with two letters. And how do you access a particluar department in the url after the {browse}/{*multipleDepartments}/ part.
void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
{
routes.MapRoute(
"browse", //Name of the Route (can be anyuthting)
"{*departments}/regexp goes here.aspx", // parameters not to sure about the*
"~/Departments.aspx"); //Page which will handles and process the request
}
check my comments
Also I have created a CTE Expression which createds the Url for me it builds a link like the example above /computers/consoles/playstation-3 if I have to put that in parameters how Do i deal with that in a parameters url, what I mean is the parameters would be multiple on the same query like Departments.aspx?a=computersb=consoles&c=playstation-3. I wouldn't know how deep the query is so what do I do if it's in this case dealing with parameter.
I think you are going about this the wrong way... the culture info shouldn't be the page name, it should be part of the url. You don't normally create separate pages for different languages, instead you use resources to localise a page.
With URL routing, generally the make-up of a route follows the pattern {controller}/{action}/{id}.
So the URL you are looking to route would look similar to this:
www.website.com/en-NZ/consoles/list/playstation-3
For further reference, check out these good tutorials:
Scott Guthrie: ASP.NET MVC Framework (Part 2): URL Routing
Stephen Walther: ASP.NET MVC Routing Overview

IgnoreRoute with webservice - Exclude asmx URLs from routing

Im adding the filevistacontrol to my asp.net MVC web application.
I have a media.aspx page that is ignored in the routing with
routes.IgnoreRoute("media.aspx");
This works successfully and serves a standard webforms page.
Upon adding the filevistacontrol, I can't seem to ignore any calls the control makes to it's webservice.
Eg the following ignoreRoute still seems to get picked up by the MvcHandler.
routes.IgnoreRoute("FileVistaControl/filevista.asmx/GetLanguageFile/");
The exception thrown is:
'The RouteData must contain an item named 'controller' with a non-empty string value'
Thanks in advance.
Short answer:
routes.IgnoreRoute( "{*url}", new { url = #".*\.asmx(/.*)?" } );
Long answer:
If your service can be in any level of a path, none of these options will work for all possible .asmx services:
routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.asmx/{*pathInfo}");
routes.IgnoreRoute("{directory}/{resource}.asmx/{*pathInfo}");
By default, the parameters in a route pattern will match until they find a slash.
If the parameter starts with a star *, like pathInfo in those answers, it will match everything, including slashes.
So:
the first answer will only work for .asmx services in the root path, becasuse {resource} will not match slashes. (Would work for something like http://example.com/weather.asmx/forecast)
the second one will only work for .asmx services which are one level away from the root.{directory} will match the first segment of the path, and {resource} the name of the service. (Would work for something like http://example.com/services/weather.asmx/forecast)
None would work for http://example.com/services/weather/weather.asmx/forecast)
The solution is using another overload of the IgnoreRoute method which allows to specify constraints. Using this solution you can use a simple pattern which matches all the url, like this: {*url}. Then you only have to set a constraint which checks that this url refers to a .asmx service. This constraint can be expressed with a regex like this: .*\.asmx(/.*)?. This regex matches any string which ends with .asmx optionally followed by an slash and any number of characters after it.
So, the final answer is this:
routes.IgnoreRoute( "{*url}", new { url = #".*\.asmx(/.*)?" } );
I got it to work using this (a combo of other answers):
routes.IgnoreRoute("{directory}/{resource}.asmx/{*pathInfo}");
What happens when you use:
routes.IgnoreRoute("FileVistaControl/filevista.asmx");
If that doesn't work, try using the ASP.NET Routing Debugger to help you:
http://haacked.com/archive/2008/03/13/url-routing-debugger.aspx
Try this:
routes.IgnoreRoute("{*filevista}", new { filevista = #"(.*/)?filevista.asmx(/.*)?" });
This is based on a Phil Haack recommendation stated here.
Have you tried:
routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.aspx/{*pathInfo}");
routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.asmx/{*pathInfo}");
It would help if you posted the source for your route configuration. I'm going to take a shot in the dark and say to make sure that your IgnoreRoute() calls are all at the top of your routing definition.
The way IgnoreRoute works is to create a route that matches the ignored route URL and constraints, and attaches a StopRoutingHandler as the RouteHandler. The UrlRoutingModule knows that a StopRoutingHandler means it shouldn't route the request.
As we know, the routes are matched in the order of which they are defined. So, if your {controller}/{action}/{id} route appears before your "FileVistaControl/filevista.asmx/GetLanguageFile/" route, then it will match the "{controller}/{action}/{id}" route.
I may be totally off base here, but it's hard to know without seeing your source. Hope this helps. And post source code! You'll get better answers.

ASP.NET routing: Literal sub-segment between tokens, and route values with a character from the literal sub-segment

The reason I'm asking is because IIS protects certain ASP.NET folders, like Bin, App_Data, App_Code, etc. Even if the URL does not map to an actual file system folder IIS rejects a URL with a path segment equal to one of the mentioned names.
This means I cannot have a route like this:
{controller}/{action}/{id}
... where id can be any string e.g.
Catalog/Product/Bin
So, instead of disabling this security measure I'm willing to change the route, using a suffix before the id, like these:
{controller}/{action}_{id} // e.g. Catalog/Product_Bin
{controller}/{action}/_{id} // e.g. Catalog/Product/_Bin
But these routes won't work if the id contains the new delimeter, _ in this case, e.g.
// These URL won't work (I get 404 response)
Catalog/Product_Bin_
Catalog/Product/_Bin_
Catalog/Product/__Bin
Why? I don't know, looks like a bug to me. How can I make these routes work, where id can be any string?
Ok, I have a definitive answer. Yes, this is a bug. However, at this point I regret to say we have no plans to fix it for a couple of reasons:
It's a breaking change and could be a very hard to notice one at that.
There's an easy workaround.
What you can do is change the URL to not have the underscore:
{controller}/{action}/_{id}
Then add a route constraint that requires that the ID parameter starts with an underscore character.
Then within your action method you trim off the underscore prefix from the id parameter. You could even write an action filter to do this for you if you liked. Sorry for the inconvenience.
You can use characters that are not allowed for a directory or file name like: *,?,:,",<,>,|.
With ASP.NET MVC if you look at the source they have a hard-coded value for the path separator (/) and to my knowledge cannot be changed.

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