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:

<security>
  <requestFiltering allowDoubleEscaping="true"/>
</security>

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?

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

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:

<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" />

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.

Answer 3

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:

<script>
    $('a:contains("Change your Town")').on("click", function (event) {
        event.preventDefault();
        window.location.href = '@Url.Action("Manage", "GeoData", new { id = User.Identity.Name })' + "/";
    });</script>

please note the trailing slash, that is responsible for changing

http://localhost:51003/GeoData/Manage/[e-mail]

into

http://localhost:51003/GeoData/Manage/[e-mail]/

Answer 4

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

Answer 5

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 & 7. You could assign specific handlers to different paths after the 'route' by modifying path="*" in 'add' elements

  <location path="route">
    <system.web>
      <httpHandlers>
        <add path="*" type="System.Web.Handlers.TransferRequestHandler" verb="GET,HEAD,POST,DEBUG,PUT,DELETE,PATCH,OPTIONS" />
      </httpHandlers>
    </system.web>
    <!-- Required for IIS 7.0 -->
    <system.webServer>
      <modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" />
      <validation validateIntegratedModeConfiguration="false" />
      <handlers>
        <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" />
      </handlers>
    </system.webServer>
  </location>

Answer 6

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.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>

<system.webServer>
  <rewrite>
    <rules>
      <rule name="Add trailing slash for some URLs" stopProcessing="true">
        <match url="^(.*(\.).+[^\/])$" />
          <conditions>
              <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" />
              <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" />
          </conditions>
          <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" />
      </rule>
    </rules>
    </rewrite>
</system.webServer>

</configuration>