I have a project that requires my URLs have dots in the path. For example I may have a URL such as www.example.com/people/michael.phelps
URLs with the dot generate a 404. My routing is fine. If I pass in michaelphelps, without the dot, then everything works. If I add the dot I get a 404 error. The sample site is running on Windows 7 with IIS8 Express. URLScan is not running.
I tried adding the following to my web.config:
<security>
<requestFiltering allowDoubleEscaping="true"/>
</security>
Unfortunately that didn't make a difference. I just receive a 404.0 Not Found error.
This is a MVC4 project but I don't think that's relevant. My routing works fine and the parameters I expect are there, until they include a dot.
What do I need to configure so I can have dots in my URL?
I got this working by editing my site's HTTP handlers. For my needs this works well and resolves my issue.
I simply added a new HTTP handler that looks for specific path criteria. If the request matches it is correctly sent to .NET for processing. I'm much happier with this solution that the URLRewrite hack or enabling RAMMFAR.
For example to have .NET process the URL www.example.com/people/michael.phelps add the following line to your site's web.config within the system.webServer / handlers element:
<add name="ApiURIs-ISAPI-Integrated-4.0"
path="/people/*"
verb="GET,HEAD,POST,DEBUG,PUT,DELETE,PATCH,OPTIONS"
type="System.Web.Handlers.TransferRequestHandler"
preCondition="integratedMode,runtimeVersionv4.0" />
Edit
There are other posts suggesting that the solution to this issue is RAMMFAR or RunAllManagedModulesForAllRequests. Enabling this option will enable all managed modules for all requests. That means static files such as images, PDFs and everything else will be processed by .NET when they don't need to be. This options is best left off unless you have a specific case for it.
After some poking around I found that relaxedUrlToFileSystemMapping did not work at all for me, what worked in my case was setting RAMMFAR to true, the same is valid for (.net 4.0 + mvc3) and (.net 4.5 + mvc4).
<system.webserver>
<modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true">
Be aware when setting RAMMFAR true Hanselman post about RAMMFAR and performance
I believe you have to set the property relaxedUrlToFileSystemMapping in your web.config. Haack wrote an article about this a little while ago (and there are some other SO posts asking the same types of question)
<system.web>
<httpRuntime relaxedUrlToFileSystemMapping="true" />
Edit
From the comments below, later versions of .NET / IIS may require this to be in the system.WebServer element.
<system.webServer>
<httpRuntime relaxedUrlToFileSystemMapping="true" />
I got stuck on this issue for a long time following all the different remedies without avail.
I noticed that when adding a forward slash [/] to the end of the URL containing the dots [.], it did not throw a 404 error and it actually worked.
I finally solved the issue using a URL rewriter like IIS URL Rewrite to watch for a particular pattern and append the training slash.
My URL looks like this: /Contact/~firstname.lastname so my pattern is simply: /Contact/~(.*[^/])$
I got this idea from Scott Forsyth, see link below:
http://weblogs.asp.net/owscott/handing-mvc-paths-with-dots-in-the-path
Just add this section to Web.config, and all requests to the route/{*pathInfo} will be handled by the specified handler, even when there are dots in pathInfo. (taken from ServiceStack MVC Host Web.config example and this answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/12151501/801189)
This should work for both IIS 6 & 7. You could assign specific handlers to different paths after the 'route' by modifying path="*" in 'add' elements
<location path="route">
<system.web>
<httpHandlers>
<add path="*" type="System.Web.Handlers.TransferRequestHandler" verb="GET,HEAD,POST,DEBUG,PUT,DELETE,PATCH,OPTIONS" />
</httpHandlers>
</system.web>
<!-- Required for IIS 7.0 -->
<system.webServer>
<modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" />
<validation validateIntegratedModeConfiguration="false" />
<handlers>
<add name="ApiURIs-ISAPI-Integrated-4.0" path="*" type="System.Web.Handlers.TransferRequestHandler" verb="GET,HEAD,POST,DEBUG,PUT,DELETE,PATCH,OPTIONS" preCondition="integratedMode,runtimeVersionv4.0" />
</handlers>
</system.webServer>
</location>
MVC 5.0 Workaround.
Many of the suggested answers doesn't seem to work in MVC 5.0.
As the 404 dot problem in the last section can be solved by closing that section with a trailing slash, here's the little trick I use, clean and simple.
While keeping a convenient placeholder in your view:
#Html.ActionLink("Change your Town", "Manage", "GeoData", new { id = User.Identity.Name }, null)
add a little jquery/javascript to get the job done:
<script>
$('a:contains("Change your Town")').on("click", function (event) {
event.preventDefault();
window.location.href = '#Url.Action("Manage", "GeoData", new { id = User.Identity.Name })' + "/";
});</script>
please note the trailing slash, that is responsible for changing
http://localhost:51003/GeoData/Manage/user#foo.com
into
http://localhost:51003/GeoData/Manage/user#foo.com/
Super easy answer for those that only have this on one webpage. Edit your actionlink and a + "/" on the end of it.
#Html.ActionLink("Edit", "Edit", new { id = item.name + "/" }) |
Depending on how important it is for you to keep your URI without querystrings, you can also just pass the value with dots as part of the querystring, not the URI.
E.g. www.example.com/people?name=michael.phelps will work, without having to change any settings or anything.
You lose the elegance of having a clean URI, but this solution does not require changing or adding any settings or handlers.
You might want to think about using dashes instead of periods.
In Pro ASP MVC 3 Framework they suggest this about making friendly URLs:
Avoid symbols, codes, and character sequences. If you want a word
separator, use a dash (/my-great-article). Underscores are unfriendly,
and URL-encoded spaces are bizarre (/my+great+article) or disgusting
(/my%20great%20article).
It also mentions that URLs should be be easy to read and change for humans. Maybe a reason to think about using a dash instead of a dot also comes from the same book:
Don't use file name extensions for HTML pages (.aspx or .mvc), but do use them for specialized file types (.jpg, .pdf, .zip, etc). Web browsers don't care about file name extensions if you set the MIME type appropriately, but humans still expect PDF files to end with .pdf
So while a period is still readable to humans (though less readable than dashes, IMO), it might still be a bit confusing/misleading depending on what comes after the period. What if someone has a last name of zip? Then the URL will be /John.zip instead of /John-zip, something that can be misleading even to the developer that wrote the application.
Would it be possible to change your URL structure?
For what I was working on I tried a route for
url: "Download/{fileName}"
but it failed with anything that had a . in it.
I switched the route to
routes.MapRoute(
name: "Download",
url: "{fileName}/Download",
defaults: new { controller = "Home", action = "Download", }
);
Now I can put in localhost:xxxxx/File1.doc/Download and it works fine.
My helpers in the view also picked up on it
#Html.ActionLink("click here", "Download", new { fileName = "File1.doc"})
that makes a link to the localhost:xxxxx/File1.doc/Download format as well.
Maybe you could put an unneeded word like "/view" or action on the end of your route so your property can end with a trailing / something like /mike.smith/view
As solution could be also considering encoding to a format which doesn't contain symbol., as base64.
In js should be added
btoa(parameter);
In controller
byte[] bytes = Convert.FromBase64String(parameter);
string parameter= Encoding.UTF8.GetString(bytes);
It's as simple as changing path="." to path="". Just remove the dot in the path for ExensionlessUrlHandler-Integrated-4.0 in web.config.
Here's a nice article https://weblog.west-wind.com/posts/2015/Nov/13/Serving-URLs-with-File-Extensions-in-an-ASPNET-MVC-Application
Tried all the solutions above but none of them worked for me. What did work was I uninstalling .NET versions > 4.5, including all its multilingual versions; Eventually I added newer (English only) versions piece by piece. Right now versions installed on my system is this:
2.0
3.0
3.5 4
4.5
4.5.1
4.5.2
4.6
4.6.1
And its still working at this point. I'm afraid to install 4.6.2 because it might mess everything up.
So I could only speculate that either 4.6.2 or all those non-English versions were messing up my configuration.
I was able to solve my particular version of this problem (had to make /customer.html route to /customer, trailing slashes not allowed) using the solution at https://stackoverflow.com/a/13082446/1454265, and substituting path="*.html".
Add URL Rewrite rule to Web.config archive. You need to have the URL Rewrite module already installed in IIS. Use the following rewrite rule as inspiration for your own.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
<system.webServer>
<rewrite>
<rules>
<rule name="Add trailing slash for some URLs" stopProcessing="true">
<match url="^(.*(\.).+[^\/])$" />
<conditions>
<add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" />
<add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" />
</conditions>
<action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" />
</rule>
</rules>
</rewrite>
</system.webServer>
</configuration>
Also, (related) check the order of your handler mappings. We had a .ashx with a .svc (e.g. /foo.asmx/bar.svc/path) in the path after it. The .svc mapping was first so 404 for the .svc path which matched before the .asmx.
Havn't thought too much but maybe url encodeing the path would take care of this.
This is the best solution I have found for the error 404 on IIS 7.5 and .NET Framework 4.5 environment, and without using: runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true".
I followed this thread: https://forums.asp.net/t/2070064.aspx?Web+API+2+URL+routing+404+error+on+IIS+7+5+IIS+Express+works+fine and I have modified my web.config accordingly, and now the MVC web app works well on IIS 7.5 and .NET Framework 4.5 environment.
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Mvc;
namespace WebApplication1.Controllers
{
[RoutePrefix("File")]
[Route("{action=index}")]
public class FileController : Controller
{
// GET: File
public ActionResult Index()
{
return View();
}
[AllowAnonymous]
[Route("Image/{extension?}/{filename}")]
public ActionResult Image(string extension, string filename)
{
var dir = Server.MapPath("/app_data/images");
var path = Path.Combine(dir, filename+"."+ (extension!=null? extension:"jpg"));
// var extension = filename.Substring(0,filename.LastIndexOf("."));
return base.File(path, "image/jpeg");
}
}
}
I have a large affiliate marketing site with millions of products hosted on Windows Azure.
For SEO I have to provide a sitemap.xml which is dynamically created.
public ActionResult SiteMap()
{
string sitemapUrl = "https://trendley.blob.core.windows.net/sitemap/sitemap.xml";
byte[] bImage = null;
using (WebClient wc = new WebClient())
{
bImage = wc.DownloadData(sitemapUrl);
}
return File(bImage, "application/octet-stream");
}
I added the follwoing route to my RouteConfig:
routes.MapRoute("Sitemap",
"sitemap.xml",
new { controller = "Home", action = "Sitemap" });
Unfortunately this is not workting.
I get -> HTTP Error 404.0 - Not Found
When I change "sitemap.xml" to sitemapxml (remove the extension) my controller method is invoked.
Already did some research and played with my web.config but nothing seems to work.
First thing I tried was to add:
<modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" />
Second thing:
<add
name="AdfsMetadata"
path="sitemap.xml"
verb="GET"
type="System.Web.Handlers.TransferRequestHandler"
preCondition="integratedMode,runtimeVersionv4.0" />
Can someone tell me how to acomplish this.
Do I have to write my own Handler for this?
Cheers,
Stefan
The reason that that route is not working is because by default .xml is handled by the "StaticFileHandler" in IIS so when the request comes in ASP.net is not invoked.
Option 1: Enable runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests - in your web .config add the following
<modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" />
It goes inside of the system.webserver node.
option 2: Add a mapping for .xml to IIS and force that file extension into the ASP.net pipeline. See here
Please follow these steps:
1- Delete sitemap.xml from root of website directory (if exists)
2- Put MapRoute for sitemap.xml over other MapRoutes like this :
public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
{
routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");
routes.MapRoute(
"Sitemap",
"sitemap.xml",
new { controller = "Home", action = "Sitemap" }
);
routes.MapRoute(
name: "Default",
url: "{controller}/{action}/{id}",
defaults: new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional }
);
}
The reason of error is when sitemap RouteMap is under other rules , MVC checks the /sitemap.xml with above RouteMap , then throws error 404 for no matching controller/action.
I Know this is an old topic, but I have a solution that is better than "runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests".
Modules Preconditions:
The IIS core engine uses preconditions to determine when to enable a particular module. Performance reasons, for example, might determine that you only want to execute managed modules for requests that also go to a managed handler. The precondition in the following example (precondition="managedHandler") only enables the forms authentication module for requests that are also handled by a managed handler, such as requests to .aspx or .asmx files:
<add name="FormsAuthentication" type="System.Web.Security.FormsAuthenticationModule" preCondition="managedHandler" />
If you remove the attribute precondition="managedHandler", Forms Authentication also applies to content that is not served by managed handlers, such as .html, .jpg, .doc, but also for classic ASP (.asp) or PHP (.php) extensions. See "How to Take Advantage of IIS Integrated Pipeline" for an example of enabling ASP.NET modules to run for all content.
You can also use a shortcut to enable all managed (ASP.NET) modules to run for all requests in your application, regardless of the "managedHandler" precondition.
To enable all managed modules to run for all requests without configuring each module entry to remove the "managedHandler" precondition, use the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests property in the <modules> section:
<modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" />
When you use this property, the "managedHandler" precondition has no effect and all managed modules run for all requests.
You can learn more from it's original topic: runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests=“true” Meaning
So, the better way to set a HTTP handler for a .XML url on MVC is the following:
<system.webServer>
<handlers>
<add name="Sitemap" path="sitemap.xml" type="System.Web.UI.PageHandlerFactory" verb="*" />
</handlers>
</system.webServer>
I converted my MVC 3 project from to aspx to razor, having a problem with this line:
ASPX:
<%# Register TagPrefix="cc1" Namespace="WebControlCaptcha" Assembly="WebControlCaptcha" %>
Razor:
#{
Register TagPrefix="cc1" Namespace="WebControlCaptcha" Assembly="WebControlCaptcha";
}
Here is the error:
Compiler Error Message: CS1002: ; expected
Thanks in advance.
You can put, in the web.config inside Views folder, the following key:
<configuration>
<system.web>
<pages>
<controls>
<add assembly="WebControlCaptcha" namespace="WebControlCaptcha" tagPrefix="cc1" />
</controls>
</pages>
</system.web>
</configuration>
In my case, the application pool was set to use integrated pipeline mode with .NET Framework 2.0. The CAPTCHA image would not generate. I changed the application pool to use "Classic" while leaving the .NET Framework option the same and this fixed the image generation issue.
I am having trouble with Crystal Reports when using charts and images which use CrystalImageHandler.aspx. The image cannot display and I suspect this is due to a problem with MVC routing.
The path image path is similar to this:
src="/CrystalImageHandler.aspx?dynamicimage=cr_tmp_image_a8301f51-26de-4869-be9f-c3c9ad9cc85e.png"
With the URL similar to this:
localhost:01234/ViewCrystalReports.aspx?id=50
The image cannot be found prumably because it's looking in a non-existant directory. How can I change the path CrystalImageHandler.aspx is located at? I think if I were to reference from the root the problem would be solved but anything I change in Web.Config fails to work.
I should mention this is on a conventional aspx page, not a view etc
I solve this problem editing Web.Config file
Insert the following line:
<system.web>
...
<httpHandlers>
<add path="CrystalImageHandler.aspx" verb="GET" type="CrystalDecisions.Web.CrystalImageHandler, CrystalDecisions.Web, Version=13.0.2000.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=692fbea5521e1304"></add>
</httpHandlers>
...
*take care with write your number version (Version=xx.x.xxxx.x)
Figured it out. The routing was interfering with the CrystalImageHandler.aspx link that was being generated. Global.aspx has the following line to tell the routing engine to ignore resource files:
routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");
but this isn't a conventional resource file, it's an aspx file for some reason (anyone know why?)
adding this fixed it:
routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.aspx/{*pathInfo}");
public class CrystalImageHandlerController : Controller
{
//
// GET: /Reports/CrystalImageHandler.aspx
public ActionResult Index()
{
return Content("");
}
protected override void OnActionExecuted(ActionExecutedContext filterContext)
{
var handler = new CrystalDecisions.Web.CrystalImageHandler();
var app = (HttpApplication)filterContext.RequestContext.HttpContext.GetService(typeof(HttpApplication));
if (app == null) return;
handler.ProcessRequest(app.Context);
}
}
This controller will invoke the handler. Just add a route to this as CrystalImageHandler.aspx, it can also be used with any sub path you'd like (in this case /reports). Something I could NEVER get the handler to do via configuration.
To view in local machine,you will add the following code in web config
<httpHandlers>
<add verb="GET" path="CrystalImageHandler.aspx" type="CrystalDecisions.Web.CrystalImageHandler, CrystalDecisions.Web,Version=10.2.3600.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=692fbea5521e1304" />
</httpHandlers>
...............................
<appSettings>
<add key="CrystalImageCleaner-AutoStart" value="true" />
<add key="CrystalImageCleaner-Sleep" value="60000" />
<add key="CrystalImageCleaner-Age" value="120000" />
</appSettings>
The following code is for displaying in server
<system.webServer>
<handlers>
<add name="CrystalImageHandler.aspx_GET" verb="GET" path="CrystalImageHandler.aspx" type="CrystalDecisions.Web.CrystalImageHandler, CrystalDecisions.Web, Version=10.2.3600.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=692fbea5521e1304" preCondition="integratedMode"/>
</handlers>
</system.webServer>
:) I will solve that problem in adding in web config
It's because the routing was interfering with the CrystalImageHandler.aspx. So either in Global.asax or routeConfig file we can ignore route for .aspx extension files. You can ignore .aspx extension route by adding following line.
routes.IgnoreRoute("{allaspx}", new {allaspx=#"..aspx(/.*)?"});