IIS does not encode utf-8 urls? - iis

Question

I'm running Joomla 2.5 on an IIS7 server.
The problem is Joomla's search engine friendly urls don't work. Whatever url I enter, it goes to index.php.
After a painful day of struggling with rewrite rules and IIS settings, I came to two realizations:
Search engine friendly urls are only broken when the urls are unicode.
In my WAMP server, on which the SEF urls work perfectly:
$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] is "mydomain/%D9%85%D8%AD%D8%B5%D9%88%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%AA/%D9%82%D9%84%D8%A8%DB%8C-%D8%B9%D8%B1%D9%88%D9%82%DB%8C"
But in IIS
$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] is "mydomain/???????/????-?????"
It looks like urls are not URLEncoded.
I have enabled unicode aliases, search engine friendly urls, and rewrite in Joomla's global configuration.
I have copy/pasted the web.config.txt into my web.config.
Here is my web.config file:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
<appSettings />
<connectionStrings>
****
</connectionStrings>
<system.web>
<compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.0">
<assemblies>
<add assembly="System.Web.Extensions.Design, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=****" />
<add assembly="System.Design, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=****" />
<add assembly="System.Windows.Forms, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=****" />
</assemblies>
</compilation>
<customErrors mode="Off" />
<pages controlRenderingCompatibilityVersion="3.5" clientIDMode="AutoID" />
</system.web>
<system.webServer>
<directoryBrowse enabled="false" />
<defaultDocument>
<files>
<clear />
<add value="Default.htm" />
<add value="default.html" />
<add value="Default.asp" />
<add value="default.aspx" />
<add value="default.php" />
<add value="default.pl" />
<add value="default.cgi" />
<add value="index.htm" />
<add value="index.html" />
<add value="index.asp" />
<add value="index.aspx" />
<add value="index.php" />
<add value="index.pl" />
<add value="index.cgi" />
<add value="iisstart.htm" />
<add value="_holding.html" />
</files>
</defaultDocument>
<security>
<requestFiltering>
<hiddenSegments>
<add segment="backup" />
<add segment="oldsite" />
<add segment="logs" />
<add segment="tmp" />
<add segment="upload" />
</hiddenSegments>
</requestFiltering>
</security>
<httpErrors>
<remove statusCode="404" subStatusCode="-1" />
<error statusCode="404" prefixLanguageFilePath="" path="/" responseMode="ExecuteURL" />
</httpErrors>
<rewrite>
<rules>
<clear />
<rule name="Common Exploit Blocking" stopProcessing="true">
<match url="^(.*)$" />
<conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAny">
<add input="{QUERY_STRING}" pattern="mosConfig_[a-zA-Z_]{1,21}(=|\%3D)" />
<add input="{QUERY_STRING}" pattern="base64_encode.*\(.*\)" />
<add input="{QUERY_STRING}" pattern="(\<|%3C).*script.*(\>|%3E)" />
<add input="{QUERY_STRING}" pattern="GLOBALS(=|\[|\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2})" />
<add input="{QUERY_STRING}" pattern="_REQUEST(=|\[|\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2})" />
</conditions>
<action type="Redirect" url="index.php" appendQueryString="false" redirectType="SeeOther" />
</rule>
<rule name="Joomla Search Rule" stopProcessing="true">
<match url="(.*)" ignoreCase="true" />
<conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll">
<add input="{URL}" pattern="^/search.php" ignoreCase="true" />
</conditions>
<action type="Rewrite" url="/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4" />
</rule>
<rule name="Joomla Main Rewrite Rule" stopProcessing="true">
<match url="(.*)" ignoreCase="true" />
<conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll">
<add input="{URL}" pattern="(/[^.]*|\.(php|html?|feed|pdf|raw))$" />
<add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" />
<add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" />
</conditions>
<action type="Rewrite" url="index.php/" />
</rule>
</rules>
</rewrite>
<caching>
<profiles>
<add extension=".php" policy="DisableCache" kernelCachePolicy="DisableCache" />
</profiles>
</caching>
</system.webServer>
</configuration>

Answer 1

This is a known bug of IIS7 and there is a hotfix for it, but I am in a hosted environment without privileges to install hotfixes. Here's a link to the Microsoft support website with detailed explanation and the resolution for the issue: FIX: A PHP application that depends on the REQUEST_URI server variable may fail when a request whose URL contains UTF-8 characters is sent to IIS 7.5
But if you can't install the hotfix, here's a workaround to get Joomla's SEF urls work with unicode:
The documentation says php's $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] doesn't work with unicode url rewriting, but I figured out that parameters work perfectly. We can send the url as a parameter to the php code and assign it to $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']
Change your second rewrite rule in web.config file as follows:
<rule name="Joomla! Rule 2">
<match url="(.*)" ignoreCase="false" />
<conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">
<add input="{URL}" pattern="^/index.php" negate="true" />
<add input="{URL}" pattern="/component/|(/[^.]*|\.(php|html?|feed|pdf|vcf|raw))$" />
<add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" />
<add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" />
</conditions>
<action type="Rewrite" url="index.php?requesturi={URL}" />
</rule>
The only change is modifying the url attribute of the <action> tag
In your index.php (located at the root directory of your Joomla site), add this at the top (just after the <?php opening tag)
$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] = $_GET['requesturi'];
Done. You have unicode in your beautified urls.