URL rewritting

A URL Rewriting

This article describes a complete solution for URL rewriting in ASP.NET 2.0. The solution uses regular expressions to specify rewriting rules and resolves possible difficulties with postback from pages accessed via virtual URLs.

Why should we use URL rewriting?

The two main reasons to incorporate URL rewriting capabilities into your ASP.NET applications are increased usability and easy to maintain

(1)increased usability

It is well-known that users of web applications prefer short, neat URLs to monstrous addresses packed with difficult to comprehend query string parameters. From time to time, being able to remember and type in a concise URL is less time-consuming than adding the page to a browser's favorites only to access later. Again, when access to a browser's favorites is unavailable, it can be more convenient to type in the URL of a page on the browser address bar, without having to remember a few keywords and type them into a search engine in order to find the page.
Compare the following two addresses and decide which one you like more:
(1) http://www.zombie.com/Blogs/lastest.aspx?yy=2008&mm=08&dd=20

(2) http://www. Zombie.com/Blogs/2008/08/20/
As we can see the first url is little descriptive and it is useless to remember for end user who is browsing your site, so second one is defined, it can be clearly seen that second one is much better to read and useable.

(2)Easy to maintain

It is very common scenario in web world that changes are taken place each and every day in our developer life, say we have page called contactus.aspx in contact folder and tos.aspx in terms folder but later we decide to move both the pages on static Content folder ,now if any one has book marked our page will get an error stating that page is not there(As we have moved it), so for that purpose also this rewriting is useful, We can make changes in our config file and maintain it very easily, By this we can see clear separation between physical structure and logical structure of stored files.

URL mapping from web.config

ASP.NET 2.0 provides an out-of-the-box solution for mapping static URLs within a web application. It is possible to map old URLs to new ones in web.config without writing any lines of code. To use URL mapping, just create a new urlMappings section within the System.web section of your web.config file and add the required mappings (the path ~/ points to the root directory of the web application):




Thus, if a user types http://www.zombie.com/contact/contact.aspx, he can then see the page located at http://www.zombie.com/staci/contact.aspx.

ZOMBIE:NOTE: This is solution is good where there are small amount of pages moved to directories, but what if there are plenty of pages that have been moved away here and there??? So content for the same is coming soon stay tuned…..