Question

I am running a timer and performing a redirect after a user changes his or her password (AKA, notify them that the password was changed and then send them back to the home page). However, I can’t seem to do a relative path in the code below. Listed below is what I’d like to do:

Response.AddHeader("REFRESH", "2;URL="~/pages/home.aspx");

Why isn’t this working? How do I get it to work? (I know I can do relative paths in other parts of the site, but that is because it is running server side.) Thanks.

Answer 1

You need to specify an absolute URL for the REFRESH header. Take a look at this post showing how to obtain an absolute URL from relative (you could use the ResolveServerUrl shown there):

Response.AddHeader("REFRESH", "2;url=" + ResolveServerUrl("~/pages/home.aspx"));

For reference:

/// <summary>
/// This method returns a fully qualified absolute server Url which includes
/// the protocol, server, port in addition to the server relative Url.
/// 
/// Works like Control.ResolveUrl including support for ~ syntax
/// but returns an absolute URL.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="ServerUrl">Any Url, either App relative or fully qualified</param>
/// <param name="forceHttps">if true forces the url to use https</param>
/// <returns></returns>
public static string ResolveServerUrl(string serverUrl, bool forceHttps)
{
    // *** Is it already an absolute Url?
    if (serverUrl.IndexOf("://") > -1)
        return serverUrl;

    // *** Start by fixing up the Url an Application relative Url
    string newUrl = ResolveUrl(serverUrl);

    Uri originalUri = HttpContext.Current.Request.Url;
    newUrl = (forceHttps ? "https" : originalUri.Scheme) + 
             "://" + originalUri.Authority + newUrl;

    return newUrl;
} 

/// <summary>
/// This method returns a fully qualified absolute server Url which includes
/// the protocol, server, port in addition to the server relative Url.
/// 
/// It work like Page.ResolveUrl, but adds these to the beginning.
/// This method is useful for generating Urls for AJAX methods
/// </summary>
/// <param name="ServerUrl">Any Url, either App relative or fully qualified</param>
/// <returns></returns>
public static string ResolveServerUrl(string serverUrl)
{
    return ResolveServerUrl(serverUrl, false);
}