Question

Without having a url rewriter such as ISAPI_Rewrite available, is it possible to achieve the following:

I would like a user to browse to http://www.jjj.com/directory where /directory does not actually exist. IIS transfers the user to not-found.cfm.

At this point I can serve index.cfm i.e. http://www.jjj.com/directory/index.cfm.

The url will display just fine and the page loads even though the directory or index.cfm doesn’t exist. However I’d like to be able to not have index.cfm in the url.

Ideal:

1. Page Request to http://www.jjj.com/directory

2. IIS loads not-found.cfm as the default 404 errorhandler.

3. Not found strips the CGI.query_string and uses cfswitches to funnel the user to the appropriate controller function. May use onMissingTemplate?

4. The page request never changes in the URL and the page loads transparently the user with 200 OK status

5. If a user requests http://www.jjj.com/directory/index.cfm I would 301 redirect to http://www.jjj.com/directory

Current:

1. Page Request to http://www.jjj.com/directory

2. IIS loads not-found.cfm as default 404 error handler.

3. Not found strips the CGI.query_string and uses cfswitches to funnel the user to the appropriate controller function.

4. The page request changes to http://www.jjj.com/directory/index.cfm with a 200 OK status

Answer 1

You’re asking how to cut something but telling us you’re not allowed to use a knife or anything resembling one.

Here’s my only clever idea using onMissingTemplate().

GET /directory/

-> 404.cfm

-> <cfinclude template="#cgi.script_name#/special.cfm" />

-> fires onMissingTemplate() where you ignore the “special.cfm” bit and just use the rest of the requested path to figure out what controller to wire up to.

This is a kludgy hack, though, so I would try to avoid it myself. Maybe if you explain why ISAPI Rewriting isn’t an option, then we might be able to help further.