Dots in URL causes 404 with ASP NET mvc and IIS

Question

I have a project that requires my URLs have dots in the path  For example I may have a URL such as www example com people michael phelps  URLs with the dot generate a 404  My routing is fine  If I pass in michaelphelps  without the dot  then everything works  If I add the dot I get a 404 error  The sample site is running on Windows 7 with IIS8 Express  URLScan is not running    I tried adding the following to my web config    lt security gt     lt requestFiltering allowDoubleEscaping  true   gt   lt  security gt      Unfortunately that didn t make a difference  I just receive a 404 0 Not Found error    This is a MVC4 project but I don t think that s relevant  My routing works fine and the parameters I expect are there  until they include a dot   What do I need to configure so I can have dots in my URL

User · Answer

I believe you have to set the property relaxedUrlToFileSystemMapping in your web.config. Haack wrote an article about this a little while ago (and there are some other SO posts asking the same types of question)

<system.web>
<httpRuntime relaxedUrlToFileSystemMapping="true" />

Edit From the comments below, later versions of .NET / IIS may require this to be in the system.WebServer element.

<system.webServer>
<httpRuntime relaxedUrlToFileSystemMapping="true" />

User · Answer

Add URL Rewrite rule to Web config archive  You need to have the URL Rewrite module already installed in IIS  Use the following rewrite rule as inspiration for your own    lt  xml version  1 0  encoding  utf-8   gt   lt configuration gt    lt system webServer gt     lt rewrite gt       lt rules gt         lt rule name  Add trailing slash for some URLs  stopProcessing  true  gt           lt match url                       gt             lt conditions gt                 lt add input   REQUEST FILENAME   matchType  IsFile  negate  true    gt                 lt add input   REQUEST FILENAME   matchType  IsDirectory  negate  true    gt             lt  conditions gt             lt action type  Redirect  url   R 1      gt         lt  rule gt       lt  rules gt       lt  rewrite gt   lt  system webServer gt    lt  configuration gt

User · Answer

Super easy answer for those that only have this on one webpage   Edit your actionlink and a       on the end of it      Html ActionLink  Edit    Edit   new   id   item name

User · Answer

using System  using System Collections Generic  using System IO  using System Linq  using System Web  using System Web Mvc   namespace WebApplication1 Controllers        RoutePrefix  File         Route   action index         public class FileController   Controller                  GET  File         public ActionResult Index                         return View                        AllowAnonymous           Route  Image  extension    filename             public ActionResult Image string extension  string filename                        var dir   Server MapPath   app data images                 var path   Path Combine dir  filename       extension  null     extension  jpg                   var extension   filename Substring 0 filename LastIndexOf                     return base File path   image jpeg

User · Answer

Just add this section to Web config  and all requests to the route   pathInfo  will be handled by the specified handler  even when there are dots in pathInfo   taken from ServiceStack MVC Host Web config example and this answer https   stackoverflow com a 12151501 801189   This should work for both IIS 6  amp  7  You could assign specific handlers to different paths after the  route  by modifying path     in  add  elements     lt location path  route  gt       lt system web gt         lt httpHandlers gt           lt add path     type  System Web Handlers TransferRequestHandler  verb  GET HEAD POST DEBUG PUT DELETE PATCH OPTIONS    gt         lt  httpHandlers gt       lt  system web gt       lt  -- Required for IIS 7 0 -- gt       lt system webServer gt         lt modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests  true    gt         lt validation validateIntegratedModeConfiguration  false    gt         lt handlers gt           lt add name  ApiURIs-ISAPI-Integrated-4 0  path     type  System Web Handlers TransferRequestHandler  verb  GET HEAD POST DEBUG PUT DELETE PATCH OPTIONS  preCondition  integratedMode runtimeVersionv4 0    gt         lt  handlers gt       lt  system webServer gt     lt  location gt

User · Answer

Would it be possible to change your URL structure  For what I was working on I tried a route for   url   Download  fileName     but it failed with anything that had a   in it   I switched the route to      routes MapRoute          name   Download           url     fileName  Download           defaults  new   controller    Home   action    Download              Now I can put in localhost xxxxx File1 doc Download and it works fine   My helpers in the view also picked up on it        Html ActionLink  click here    Download   new   fileName    File1 doc      that makes a link to the localhost xxxxx File1 doc Download format as well   Maybe you could put an unneeded word like   view  or action on the end of your route so your property can end with a trailing   something like  mike smith view

User · Answer

After some poking around I found that relaxedUrlToFileSystemMapping did not work at all for me  what worked in my case was setting RAMMFAR to true  the same is valid for   net 4 0   mvc3  and   net 4 5   mvc4     lt system webserver gt       lt modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests  true  gt    Be aware when setting RAMMFAR true Hanselman post about RAMMFAR and performance

User · Answer

I got stuck on this issue for a long time following all the different remedies without avail   I noticed that when adding a forward slash     to the end of the URL containing the dots      it did not throw a 404 error and it actually worked   I finally solved the issue using a URL rewriter like IIS URL Rewrite to watch for a particular pattern and append the training slash   My URL looks like this   Contact  firstname lastname so my pattern is simply   Contact             I got this idea from Scott Forsyth  see link below  http   weblogs asp net owscott handing-mvc-paths-with-dots-in-the-path

User · Answer

You might want to think about using dashes instead of periods   In Pro ASP MVC 3 Framework they suggest this about making friendly URLs      Avoid symbols  codes  and character sequences  If you want a word   separator  use a dash   my-great-article   Underscores are unfriendly    and URL-encoded spaces are bizarre   my great article  or disgusting     my 20great 20article     It also mentions that URLs should be be easy to read and change for humans  Maybe a reason to think about using a dash instead of a dot also comes from the same book      Don t use file name extensions for HTML pages   aspx or  mvc   but do use them for specialized file types   jpg   pdf   zip  etc   Web browsers don t care about file name extensions if you set the MIME type appropriately  but humans still expect PDF files to end with  pdf   So while a period is still readable to humans  though less readable than dashes  IMO   it might still be a bit confusing misleading depending on what comes after the period  What if someone has a last name of zip  Then the URL will be  John zip instead of  John-zip  something that can be misleading even to the developer that wrote the application

User · Answer

Tried all the solutions above but none of them worked for me  What did work was I uninstalling  NET versions   4 5  including all its multilingual versions  Eventually I added newer  English only  versions piece by piece  Right now versions installed on my system is this    2 0 3 0 3 5 4 4 5 4 5 1 4 5 2 4 6 4 6 1   And its still working at this point  I m afraid to install 4 6 2 because it might mess everything up    So I could only speculate that either 4 6 2 or all those non-English versions were messing up my configuration

User · Answer

Depending on how important it is for you to keep your URI without querystrings  you can also just pass the value with dots as part of the querystring  not the URI   E g  www example com people name michael phelps will work  without having to change any settings or anything   You lose the elegance of having a clean URI  but this solution does not require changing or adding any settings or handlers

User · Answer

I got this working by editing my site s HTTP handlers  For my needs this works well and resolves my issue    I simply added a new HTTP handler that looks for specific path criteria  If the request matches it is correctly sent to  NET for processing  I m much happier with this solution that the URLRewrite hack or enabling RAMMFAR    For example to have  NET process the URL www example com people michael phelps add the following line to your site s web config within the system webServer   handlers element    lt add name  ApiURIs-ISAPI-Integrated-4 0       path   people         verb  GET HEAD POST DEBUG PUT DELETE PATCH OPTIONS       type  System Web Handlers TransferRequestHandler       preCondition  integratedMode runtimeVersionv4 0    gt    Edit  There are other posts suggesting that the solution to this issue is RAMMFAR or RunAllManagedModulesForAllRequests  Enabling this option will enable all managed modules for all requests  That means static files such as images  PDFs and everything else will be processed by  NET when they don t need to be  This options is best left off unless you have a specific case for it

User · Answer

This is the best solution I have found for the error 404 on IIS 7 5 and  NET Framework 4 5 environment  and without using  runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests  quot true quot   I followed this thread  https   forums asp net t 2070064 aspx Web API 2 URL routing 404 error on IIS 7 5 IIS Express works fine and I have modified my web config accordingly  and now the MVC web app works well on IIS 7 5 and  NET Framework 4 5 environment

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As solution could be also considering encoding to a format which doesn t contain symbol   as base64   In js should be added   btoa parameter      In controller  byte   bytes   Convert FromBase64String parameter   string parameter  Encoding UTF8 GetString bytes

User · Answer

I was able to solve my particular version of this problem  had to make  customer html route to  customer  trailing slashes not allowed  using the solution at https   stackoverflow com a 13082446 1454265  and substituting path    html

User · Answer

MVC 5 0 Workaround   Many of the suggested answers doesn t seem to work in MVC 5 0   As the 404 dot problem in the last section can be solved by closing that section with a trailing slash  here s the little trick I use  clean and simple   While keeping a convenient placeholder in your view    Html ActionLink  Change your Town    Manage    GeoData   new   id   User Identity Name    null    add a little jquery javascript to get the job done    lt script gt         a contains  Change your Town     on  click   function  event            event preventDefault            window location href     Url Action  Manage    GeoData   new   id   User Identity Name                    lt  script gt    please note the trailing slash  that is responsible for changing  http   localhost 51003 GeoData Manage user foo com   into   http   localhost 51003 GeoData Manage user foo com

User · Answer

It s as simple as changing path     to path     Just remove the dot in the path for ExensionlessUrlHandler-Integrated-4 0 in web config   Here s a nice article https   weblog west-wind com posts 2015 Nov 13 Serving-URLs-with-File-Extensions-in-an-ASPNET-MVC-Application

User · Answer

Also   related  check the order of your handler mappings   We had a  ashx with a  svc  e g   foo asmx bar svc path  in the path after it   The  svc mapping was first so 404 for the  svc path which matched before the  asmx  Havn t thought too much but maybe url encodeing the path would take care of this

[asp.net-mvc] Dots in URL causes 404 with ASP.NET mvc and IIS

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