I have a website that uses a ReverseProxy (Helicon APE) to forward some requests to external sources. To achieve this it replaces/adds the extension .apehandler to the URL, so the Helicon APE Handler executes the request.
/ext/app1.aspx is rewritten to /ext/app1.apehandler
This works fine.
When the URL does not end in an extension, there is a problem:
/ext/app2.aspx/something is rewritten to /ext/app2.aspx/something.apehandler
This leads to URLs with two extensions.
If in the handlermapping order .apehandler is defined BEFORE .aspx all is fine.
But when .apehandler is defined AFTER .aspx the PageHandlerFactory-Handler (.aspx Handler) takes over and this results in a 404 error.
In the Failed Request Log the URL_CHANGED entry is the same in both cases, but the HANDLER_CHANGED maps to different handlers.
Maybe there is a small problem in how IIS maps URLs to Handlers in this special case?
My guess is when IIS parses the URLs to map to the handler, matching URLs with two or more extensions goes wrong.
URL /ext/app2.aspx/something.apehandler
IIS parses for .aspx , (wrongly?) finds it in above URL and executes the .aspx Handler
Any ideas?
swobi
Your guess is wrong.
When /ext/app2.aspx/something.apehandler is seen by IIS, it passes path_info of /somthing.apehandler to /ext/app2.aspx. Of course then .aspx handler is called to process it, not the Helicon APE Handler.
It is not just IIS, but all web frameworks that must handle path_info that way. You can find a PHP reference here
Related
update
Here is the situation:
I'm working on a website that has no physical folder structure. Nothing had been planned or controlled and there were about 4 consecutive webmasters.
Here is an example of an especially ugly directory
\new\new\pasite-new.asp
most pages are stored in a folder with the same name as the file, for maximum redundancy.
\New\10cap\pasite-10cap.asp
\QL\Address\PAsite-Address.asp
each of these [page directories]? (I don't know what else to call them) has an include folder, the include folder contains the same *.inc files in every case, just copied about 162 times for each page directory. The include folder was duplicated so that the
<!--#include file="urlstring"--> would work correctly due to lack of understanding of relative paths, and the #inclue virtual directive or using server.execute()
Here is a picture if my explanation was lacking.
Here are some of my limitations:
The site is written in ASP classic
Server is Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2 , IIS 6 (According to my resource)
I have no access to the IIS server
I would have to go through a process to add any modules or features to iis
What changes can I make that would allow me to move pages around and rename them while not breaking incoming links from external sites that still use the poorly formed URLs?
To make my question more specific.
How can I move the file 10cap.asp from \new\10cap\ to a better location like \ and rename the file to someting like saveourhomescap.asp and not break any incoming links and finally, not have to leave a dummy 10cap.asp page in the original location with a redirect to the new page.
Wow, that's a lot of limitations to deal with.
Can you setup a custom error page? If so you can add some code into a custom error page that would redirect users to the new page. So maybe you create a custom 404 page, and in that page you grab the query string variable and based on that send the user to the correct "new" page. That would allow you to delete all of the old pages.
Here is a pretty good article on this method: URL Rewriting for Classic ASP
Well, you have a lot of limitations and especially no access to the IIS server hurts. An ISAPI module for URL rewriting is not an option here (IIS) and equally a custom 404 page where you could read the referer and forward with a HTTP 301 won't work (IIS).
I would actually recommend you to go through the process and let them install:
An ISAPI URL rewriting module
or if that doesn't work (for any reason):
Let them point the HTTP 404 of your web to a custom 404.asp, read the referer and redirect with a HTTP 301 (Moved Permanently) to your new location.
If none of this is an option for you, I can think about another possibility. I haven't actually tried that so I'm not 100% sure if it will work, but in theory it sounds good ;)
You could make in your global.asa in the Session_OnStart event a Response.Redirect or change the header of your response to a HTTP 301. This will actually only work for new users and not fix real 404 errors. Sorry, for the pseudo code, but it's a while ago that I had anything to do with classic ASP and I think you'll get what I mean ;)
sub Session_OnStart
' here should be a Select Case switch or something like that
Response.Redirect("newlocation.asp")
' or if that will work, this would be better (again with switch)
Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently"
Response.AddHeader "Location", "http://company.com/newlocation.asp"
end sub
Hope that helps.
I recommend using URL Rewrite for that, see the following blog about it, in particular "Site Reorganization":
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/carlosag/archive/2008/09/02/iis7urlrewriteseo.aspx
For more info about URL Rewrite see: http://www.iis.net/download/URLRewrite
You can try ISAPIRewrite since it's classic ASP + IIS6
http://www.isapirewrite.com/
They have a lite version which is free, probably good enough for your use.
urlrewrite will only work if you can install a dll on the server
one of these articles will help
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=qRR&q=url+rewrite+classic+asp&btnG=Search&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g-m1
basically you have to point 404 errors to an error page which will parse the incoming querystring / post info and redirect user to correct location with incoming parameters added.
variations on that theme will be found in the examples fro google.
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:
Page Request to http://www.jjj.com/directory
IIS loads not-found.cfm as the default 404 errorhandler.
Not found strips the CGI.query_string and uses cfswitches to funnel the user to the appropriate controller function. May use onMissingTemplate?
The page request never changes in the URL and the page loads transparently the user with 200 OK status
If a user requests http://www.jjj.com/directory/index.cfm I would 301 redirect to http://www.jjj.com/directory
Current:
Page Request to http://www.jjj.com/directory
IIS loads not-found.cfm as default 404 error handler.
Not found strips the CGI.query_string and uses cfswitches to funnel the user to the appropriate controller function.
The page request changes to http://www.jjj.com/directory/index.cfm with a 200 OK status
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.
You can tell IIS to have 404 and 403 errors execute a custom URL on your site (such as /urlhandler.cfm).
Then, you can parse the 'cgi.query_string' and route the application anyway you desire using cfinclude to simply include the correct 'template.cfm', or, you can reformat the input your framework is expecting, or, use a project like http://coldcourse.riaforge.org/.
Just one note, IIS will give you a URL that looks like this: '404;http://yoursite.com/the/url/you/wanted/to/route'.
Is IIS7 on the approved list of software? That can get you native url rewriting and side-step the whole issue.
Second option -- my CFM voodoo is rusty, but I think you can setup IIS6 to look for a CFM page (like you are doing) but then step in at the application level and do the url rewriting/repointing before it actually hits the 404 page.
Another way around it -- find an ISAPI url rewriter that is, say, under the MIT license. Build your own copy. Then have them install that as part of your software package.
Is it possible to manipulate an inbound request at the IIS level, before it even gets assigned to site on the server?
Essentially, I want to rewrite this --
www.somegenericdomain.com?site=someotherdomain
To this --
www.someotherdomain.com
And I need to do this before IIS picks which site the request belongs to, so I need to change the host header prior to this point.
Possible, or crazy? We're running IIS7.
You can rewrite, redirect, or proxy requests.
Rewrite changes the request, but does not change the site to which it is assigned. With a rewrite you can:
return an HTTP error code (503, 404, 401, etc);
manipulate the query string or URL path. one example is to transform a query string param into a URL path element. www.server.com/default.aspx?s=foo becomes www.server.com/foo, or vice versa.
set headers in the request.
Redirect sends back a 301 or 302 response to the browser with an updated address. You can receive a request for www.example.com/foo and respond to the browser with a 302 and an updated address of www.otherdomain.com , etc.
Proxy the request. In this case the web server is said to act as a "transparent proxy". It means the initial IIS server can call out to a second server, grab the response, and then package it up back to the original requester.
These three actions are often done in combination. The tools used to perform these actions are called "URL Rewriters". IIS7 has a built-in option from Microsoft (The IIS URL Rewrite Module), and there are third-party options as well, some free and some commercial, for IIS6, IIS7, and other non-Windows web servers. Apache's mod_proxy is the big one for Linux. All of these tools do basically the same kinds of things.
To answer your specific question, NO, you cannot rewrite a request from one domain to another. For web servers, rewrite is a meaningful term, and a URL Rewrite excludes the possibility of a server change.
It is possible though, to transform a request from one server to another, either via redirect or proxy. One of those may actually be what you want, when you ask about "rewriting" a request.
I guess the whole thing is possible, but not in the way of running before IIS. One part of the server even works as a low-level driver.
But you may use URL rewriting solutions such as mod_rewrite module of Helicon Ape http://www.helicontech.com/ape/doc/mod_rewrite.htm. Having set the software globally for all the sites, you may get what you need as follows:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} www.somegenericdomain.com [NC]
RewriteProxy (.*) http://www.someotherdomain.com$1
What I'm trying to achieve:
Intercept requests for .asp files using an asp.net application
then re-write the url to something search engine friendly
then pass the request onto the asp.dll to handle the request.
How Im trying to acheive it:
I'm trying to get intelligencia url re-writing working for a classic asp application by
changing the IIS mapping for the website so that .asp extensions are handled by an asp.net application.
The intelligencia asp.net url re-writer then rewrites the url.
The requested .asp page is then forwarded to the asp.dll for processing. Can this bit be done? Any ideas?
My limitations:
Shared hosting account so I can't install isapi filters on the server.
Does it sound like something that could be done by writing an HTTPModule?
I've considered 301 redirect instead but am concerned about google ranking problems.
A .NET HttpModule cannot forward requests to Classic ASP in II6 because of the way the pipeline works. By the time your .NET module executes, you are in the ASP.NET handler and cannot transfer to the ASP handler.
IIS7 has the Integrated Pipeline, which would allow you to have a .NET HttpModule re-write the request to the Classic ASP handler.
You could have a custom 404 handler that clears the 404 status from the response and does a Server.Transfer or Server.Execute your page. The only thing is that you can't pass querystring parameters, so you page would need to parse the request and pull out the variables by hand.
I use a modified version of Smart404 to handle SEO friendly urls, moved files, etc. They call the feature "virtual_aliases".
Is it possible on an IIS to redirect all files with the file extension .asp to one single file (i.e. switch.php, switch.cfm) and how?
Thx in advance for the upcoming solutions :)
EDIT:
version of IIS is "IIS 6.0"
Here’s a few different thoughts off the top of my head:
Use an ISAPI filter. Either write your own or use a commercial one like Helicon ISAPI Rewrite (the reverse proxy feature should be able to do this).
Add a global.asa file to the root of the site and Response.Redirect to the page you want in the Session_OnStart event (I think this event still fires if the requested page doesn’t actually exist but am not 100% sure). More info here.
Define a new 404 “File not found” page in IIS which loads a custom page with a redirect to your desired URL. You could do this with either client or server side script and make it conditional on the requested URL having a .asp extension so as not to catch genuine 404s for other file types.
I’d say option 1 is your “best practice” approach but option 3 would get you up and running very quickly. Good luck!
your going to want to look into "iis modrewrite" on google :)
lets you use regular expressions to define rules and you can set a global match to rewrite to 1 page