Creating virtual directories in IIS express

Question

Is there any way to create a virtual directory in IIS express  I know that Cassini can t do this and it would be nice to be able to do this without using a full version of IIS   I ve got it so far that I can browse to my application locally in IIS express like this   http   localhost 1132   What I would like to do is create a virtual directory called  OffSiteStuff  and point it to some location on my C drive  like  c  offsitestuff  and then browse to items in that folder like this   http   localhost 1132 OffSiteStuff UserUploadedImage jpg  I know I could do this with a folder within my site and still use IIS Express  or  for that matter plain old Cassini  but this folder will store images uploaded by users and I really don t want to have these images mixed up with application files   The other   go big  solution is to deploy the site onto a full blown Server 2008 IIS 7 5 instance every time I want to debug the features that use offsite content  but that is a bit cumbersome too   Is there any way I can do this in the  lt System WebServer   gt  Web config element

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Be St  s aprroach is true  but incomplete  I m just copying his explanation with correcting the incorrect part   IIS express configuration is managed by applicationhost config  You can find it in       Users  lt username  Documents IISExpress config folder    Inside you can find the sites section that hold a section for each IIS Express configured site   Add  or modify  a site section like this    lt site name  WebSiteWithVirtualDirectory  id  20  gt      lt application path     applicationPool  Clr4IntegratedAppPool  gt        lt virtualDirectory path     physicalPath  c  temp website1    gt        lt virtualDirectory path   OffSiteStuff  physicalPath  d  temp SubFolderApp    gt      lt  application gt      lt bindings gt         lt binding protocol  http  bindingInformation    1132 localhost    gt      lt  bindings gt   lt  site gt    Instead of adding a new application block  you should just add a new virtualDirectory element to the application parent element   Edit - Visual Studio 2015  If you re looking for the applicationHost config file and you re using VS2015 you ll find it in       solution directory   vs config applicationHost config

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I had to make the entry in the  project  vs config applicationhost config file   Prior to this  it worked from deployment but not from code

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IIS express configuration is managed by applicationhost config  You can find it in       Users  lt username  Documents IISExpress config folder    Inside you can find the sites section that hold a section for each IIS Express configured site   Add  or modify  a site section like this    lt site name  WebSiteWithVirtualDirectory  id  20  gt      lt application path     applicationPool  Clr4IntegratedAppPool  gt        lt virtualDirectory path     physicalPath  c  temp website1    gt      lt  application gt      lt application path   OffSiteStuff  applicationPool  Clr4IntegratedAppPool  gt        lt virtualDirectory path     physicalPath  d  temp SubFolderApp    gt      lt  application gt       lt bindings gt         lt binding protocol  http  bindingInformation    1132 localhost    gt      lt  bindings gt   lt  site gt    Practically you need to add a new application tag in your site for each virtual directory  You get a lot of flexibility because you can set different configuration for the virtual directory  for example a different  Net Framework version   EDIT Thanks to Fevzi Apaydin to point to a more elegant solution   You can achieve same result by adding one or more virtualDirectory tag to the Application tag    lt site name  WebSiteWithVirtualDirectory  id  20  gt      lt application path     applicationPool  Clr4IntegratedAppPool  gt        lt virtualDirectory path     physicalPath  c  temp website1    gt        lt virtualDirectory path   OffSiteStuff  physicalPath  d  temp SubFolderApp    gt      lt  application gt       lt bindings gt         lt binding protocol  http  bindingInformation    1132 localhost    gt      lt  bindings gt   lt  site gt    Reference    Application tag for a Site  Virtual Directory tag

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In VS2013 I did this in the following steps   1 Right-click the web application project and hit Properties  2 View the  Web  tab of the Properties page  3 Under Servers  with  IIS Express  being the default choice of the dropdown  in the  Project Url  change the url using the port number to one that suits you  For example I deleted the port number and added   MVCDemo4  after the localhost   4 Click the  Create Virtual Directory  button   5 Run your project and the new url will be used

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A new option is Jexus Manager for IIS Express   https   blog lextudio com 2014 10 jexus-manager-for-iis-express   It is just the management tool you know how to use

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I had something else  the files itself where inaccessible in a SBS envirenment   Delete the files in the config folder  if you can t open them   and replace them with a copy of the folder on your own local pc   Fixed it for me

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In answer to the further question -       is there anyway to apply this within the Visual Studio project  In a multi-developer environment  if someone else check s out the code on their machine  then their local IIS Express wouldn t be configured with the virtual directory and cause runtime errors wouldn t it     I never found a consistant answer to this anywhere but then figured out you could do it with a post build event using the XmlPoke task in the project file for the website -    lt Target Name  AfterBuild  gt       lt  -- Get the local directory root  and strip off the website name  -- gt       lt PropertyGroup gt           lt LocalTarget gt   ProjectDir Replace  MyWebSite         lt  LocalTarget gt       lt  PropertyGroup gt        lt  -- Now change the virtual directories as you need to -- gt       lt XmlPoke XmlInputPath        Source Assemblies MyWebSite  vs MyWebSite config applicationhost config           Value    LocalTarget AnotherVirtual           Query   configuration system applicationHost sites site  name  MyWebSite   application  path      virtualDirectory  path   AnotherVirtual    physicalPath   gt   lt  Target gt    You can use this technique to repoint anything in the file before IISExpress starts up   This would allow you to initially force an applicationHost config file into GIT  assuming it is ignored by gitignore  then subsequently repoint all the paths at build time   GIT will ignore any changes to the file so it s now easy to share them around   In answer to the futher question about adding other applications under one site   You can create the site in your application hosts file just like the one on your server   For example      lt site name  MyWebSite  id  2  gt       lt application path     applicationPool  Clr4IntegratedAppPool  gt         lt virtualDirectory path     physicalPath  C  GIT MyWebSite Main    gt         lt virtualDirectory path   SharedContent  physicalPath  C  GIT SharedContent    gt         lt virtualDirectory path   ServerResources  physicalPath  C  GIT ServerResources    gt       lt  application gt       lt application path   AppSubSite  applicationPool  Clr4IntegratedAppPool  gt         lt virtualDirectory path     physicalPath  C  GIT AppSubSite     gt         lt virtualDirectory path   SharedContent  physicalPath  C  GIT SharedContent    gt         lt virtualDirectory path   ServerResources  physicalPath  C  GIT ServerResources    gt       lt  application gt       lt bindings gt         lt binding protocol  http  bindingInformation    4076 localhost    gt       lt  bindings gt     lt  site gt    Then use the above technique to change the folder locations at build time

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If you re using Visual Studio 2013  may require Pro edition or higher   I was able to add a virtual directory to an IIS Express  file-based  website by right-clicking on the website in the Solution Explorer and clicking Add   New Virtual Directory  This added an entry to the applicationhost config file as with the manual methods described here

[visual-studio] Creating virtual directories in IIS express

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