Question

We use TFS to deploy our applications to multiple environments (Dev, QA, Prod). Simple enough, our Dev and QA environments have URLS like dev.domain/APPLICATION and qa.domain/APPLICATION. So we have a single site with each application as a virtual application.

However in production, they want each application to be its own site, such as APPLICATION.domain.com… Grrr! In Visual Studio, the application’s properties is configured to be in a “Virtual Path”. I”m not sure how I should go about this issue. The appliation contains code such as: <a href='/APPLICATION/File/Download?id=<#= PkFileId #>'><#= Name #></a> which causes problems in production since its not in a virtual application.

I could make a site called application.domain.com with an empty directory. Then add a Virtual Application, but then I would have to put a redirect in the root of the site to go to the virtual application. Or perhaps I can somehow configure the application? Not sure what my options are… Any suggestions are appreciated!

Answer 1

The appliation contains code such as:

<a href='/APPLICATION/File/Download?id=<#= PkFileId #>'><#= Name #></a>

ASP.NET MVC applications should not contain code like that (a code in which urls are hardcoded). In ASP.NET MVC applications you should always use HTML and Url helpers:

@Html.ActionLink(
    Model.Name, 
    "Download", 
    "File", 
    new { id = Model.PkFileId }, 
    null
)

This way it is certain that no matter how your routes are configured or under which virtual directory your application is hosted, it should work.

---

UPDATE:

After your comment it looks like you are using the Telerik Grid. In this case you may try something along the lines to generate proper anchors:

columns
    .Bound(x => x.PkFileId)
    .ClientTemplate(
        Html.ActionLink(
            "<#= Name #>", 
            "Download", 
            "File", 
            new { id = "<#= PkFileId #>" }, 
            null
        ).ToString()
    )
    .Title("");