Routing document-relative static urls in MVC3 - asp.net-mvc-3

Question

I'm integrating a JavaScript library into an ASP.NET MVC3 web app. The library assumes it will be installed next to the page that references it, and so it uses document-relative URLs to find its components.
For example, the default directory layout looks like
container-page.html
jslibrary/
library.js
images/
icon.png
extensions/
extension.js
extension-icon.png
However, I want to reference the library from the view in /Home/edit. I install the library in the default Scripts\jslibrary\ When I reference the library in the view in Views\Home\edit.cshtml, the library's document-relative links like
images/icon.png
end up as requests to
http://localhost/Home/images/icon.png
which results in a File Not Found (404) error. How do I construct a route to look for
{anyControllerName}/images/{anyRemainingPathInfo}
and serve up
http://localhost/Scripts/jslibrary/images/{anyRemainingPathInfo}
?
(full disclosure: I'm still on IIS 6 in Production, and not much chance of going to IIS7 any time soon, so if this is better done at the IIS level, please account for IIS6. Thanks!)

Answer 1

You could create a controller for handling you redirect logic - for example an "Images"controller. Register a global route in your Global.asax file, using the pattern (more on this type of pattern here:
routes.MapRoute(
"Images", // Route name
"{xyz}/{controller}/{path}", // URL with parameters
new {controller = "Images", action = "Index", path= UrlParameter.Optional} // Parameter defaults);
In your controller:
public ActionResult Index(string path)
{
//format path, parse request segments, or do other work needed to Id file to return...
return base.File(path, "image/jpeg"); //once you have the path pointing to the right place...
}
Not sure if this solution will work for you, wish I could come up with something more elegant. Best of Luck!

Answer 2

Short of rewriting the library and having it check for the appropriate directory the only solution I can think of is to include the views, library and supporting files in a directory structure that the library can access. This of course would break MVC's convention over configuration way of finding views, so you would have to write a custom override of the way Razor looks for views, which is not too complex to do, but you might be making life more difficult for yourself down the road depending on your application. Your call which is the lesser of the two evils :) (I'd go for fixing the library)

Answer 3

Make a help function
#functions{
public string AbsoluteUrl(string relativeContentPath)
{
Uri contextUri = HttpContext.Current.Request.Url;
var baseUri = string.Format("{0}://{1}{2}", contextUri.Scheme,
contextUri.Host, contextUri.Port == 80 ? string.Empty : ":" + contextUri.Port);
return string.Format("{0}{1}", baseUri, VirtualPathUtility.ToAbsolute(relativeContentPath));
}
}
Calling
#AbsoluteUrl("~/Images/myImage.jpg") <!-- gives the full path like: http://localhost:54334/Images/myImage.jpg -->
This example are from
https://dejanvasic.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/generating-full-content-url-in-mvc/