Question

I thought it should be a simple straight-forward matter but after struggling with it for too much time I’m gonna have to seek for help.

What I need is to redirect all requests for my web application that match the following pattern – “^(http://[^/]+/blogs/[^/.]+)/?$” to the path of “$1/Default.aspx“.

(Using English rather than Regex: http://myapp/blogs/randomdirthatdoesntexist -> http://myapp/blogs/randomdirthatdoesntexist/default.aspx)

The sub-directories in “blogs” do not physically exist, instead a 3rd party product deals with the requests to randomdir/Default.aspx”, but when you go to “randomdir/” you get 404 not found, which is what I’m trying to fix.

I tried to use global.asax and also HttpHandler, but I couldn’t get either of them to fire up on the requests to those 404 paths.

So, in short, what should I do to redirect paths of non-existing directories?

Thanks.

Answer 1

I accomplished something similar to this by setting the Error Page for 404s in IIS to a page you create. This page is able to access the page which is being requested, and perform some additional logic. So the 404 for randomdirthatdoesntexist/ still happens, but the 404 handler notices this and redirects to randomdirthatdoesntexist/default.aspx.

I dug out my old code and tweaked it a little to do what you need in an over-simplified fashion, but I don’t have IIS6 anywhere to test:

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    String sQueryString = Request.RawUrl.Substring(Request.FilePath.Length);
    Regex rx = new Regex(@"^\?(?<errorcode>\d+);(?<args>.*)$", RegexOptions.ExplicitCapture | RegexOptions.Compiled);
    Match m = rx.Match(sQueryString);


    if (m.Success)
    {
        if (m.Groups["errorcode"].Value == "404")
        {
            String sArgs = m.Groups["args"].Value;
            Uri requestedUri = new Uri(sArgs);

            // You can now check the value of uri and perform redirection...
            if (requestedUri.ToString().EndsWith("/"))
            {
                Response.Redirect(requestedUri + "Default.aspx")
            }
        }
    }
    Response.StatusCode = 404;
}