CODEWITHSUNDEEP
asp.netasp.net-mvc-5web-configiis-8
Felype
Felype

Reputation: 3136

Asp .Net MVC 5 Folder name and Routing conflict

I have an annoying problem with folder names and routes in ASP .NET Mvc 5,

This is the default routes I'm using:

        routes.MapRoute(
            name: "Default",
            url: "{controller}/{action}/{id}",
            defaults: new { controller = "Site", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional }
        );

And I'm also using a custom view engine to map views to the root folder instead of ~/Views so I can have HTML/CSS/JS files organized in a way my team can handle.

The problem is: When I call /Backoffice/Index it goes normally and executes action Index in controller Backoffice, all fine, but when we call /Backoffice, I expected it to presume the action index (by the route configuration), but instead, IIS seems to believe I'm trying to access the folder /Backoffice and gives me a 404 error instead of executing Backoffice::Index().

How can I configure IIS to behave in the intended way in this case? Or, is it really the only best way to keep views in a specific folder?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1460

Answers (2)

Felype
Felype

Reputation: 3136

I did some research and used info from the comments and answers here and got to learn something about how MVC routes work and how IIS handles that.

When we set

routes.RouteExistingFiles = true;

The MVC runtime will ignore every file in the folder and start using the routes and URIs solely to look for controllers and actions, this means by calling /SomeContent it will search for a controller named Somefolder instead of a folder. Then we can configure to serve static content by telling MVC runtime to ignore some specific URI formats:

routes.IgnoreRoute("SomeContent/CSS/{filename}.min.css");
routes.IgnoreRoute("SomeContent/JS/{filename}.min.js");

This causes MVC to ignore URIs that match this pattern and leave it for IIS to resolve what to do with it, then IIS will look out on Web.Config rather there are configurations set to serve this kind of static content and what handler to use and proceeed as usual.

Using this configuration can bring MVC to a whole new level of control where you explicitly define which URI patterns serve static content, everything else explicitly calls an action on a controller, all URIs get to be firstly processed by MVC runtime. I sure wish someone correct me in this last statement if I get it wrong.

Upvotes: 3

Brian Mains
Brian Mains

Reputation: 50728

MVC routes certain actions based on whether they exist on disk. If you have a folder /BackOffice at the root level, then this appears to be a complication that MVC is going to have issues working around (I knew files were directly routed if they existed; I didn't realize folders were something the framework checked too). Consider renaming the folder or the controller to something else so you don't have this naming conflict. That is a problem with "by convention" approaches....

Upvotes: 1

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