Configuring IIS 6.0 to run an MVC3 application - asp.net-mvc-3

Configuring IIS 6.0 to run an MVC3 application
I think I have a configuration issue on my IIS 6 server and I'd like to see if there's anything I've missed.
The problem that I'm having is that anytime when a RedirectToAction("Index", "Home") is executed (e.g. in a method that returns an ActionResult) I would expect that I would be returned to:
http://servername.domain.com/virtualdirectoryname
However, instead I get redirected to:
http://servername.domain.com/virtualdirectoryname/virtualdirectoryname
That is a second instance of the virtualdirectoryname appended to the end of the URL and can't figure out why - this URL will of course yield a 404 resource not found error. I written and deployed several MVC3 applications both in corporate intranet and public internet environments and can't figure out what I've done wrong. My global.asax.cs seems ok -
public class MvcApplication : System.Web.HttpApplication
{
public static void RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilterCollection filters)
{
filters.Add(new HandleErrorAttribute());
}
public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
{
routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");
routes.MapRoute(
"Default", // Route name
"{controller}/{action}/{id}", // URL with parameters
new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults
);
}
protected void Application_AuthenticateRequest(Object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (HttpContext.Current.User != null)
{
if (HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.IsAuthenticated)
{
if (HttpContext.Current.User.Identity is FormsIdentity)
{
FormsIdentity id = (FormsIdentity)HttpContext.Current.User.Identity;
FormsAuthenticationTicket ticket = id.Ticket;
// Get the stored user-data, in this case, our roles
string userData = ticket.UserData;
string[] roles = userData.Split(',');
HttpContext.Current.User = new System.Security.Principal.GenericPrincipal(id, roles);
}
}
}
}
protected void Application_Start()
{
AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas();
RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilters.Filters);
RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);
}
}
The Application_AuthenticateRequest handles the storing of the roles for logged on users, but other than that, it seems pretty vanilla. The only think I can think of is that I've somehow messed up the virtual directory.
Prior to performing any of these steps, I had verified that MVC3 and v4.0 of the .NET framework were installed on the server. There are also other ASP.NET 4.0 applications on this server that have been running without incident. There is also an MVC2 application (MVC2 is also installed) running on this server and has been running without incident.
I created a virtual directory off of the main "default site" using the IIS manager.
Setup appropriate permissions on the folder that this virtual directory points to. Tested with a quick "Hello, World" index.html file.
Copied the application from my development PC where the application works as developed to the folder described in #2.
Updated the Web.Config file, editing the connection strings to point to the test database server; I had also verified these connection strings on my development PC.
Open the web browser and hope for the best.
Any assistance is greatly appreciated.
Thanks!

I think what you may be seeing is:
http://servername.domain.com/virtualdirectoryname/applicationname
If you have named your virtual directory the same name as your application then I could see how that could confuse you. If you had no virtual directory and just your application at the root of the Default Web Site you'd be seeing:
http://servername.domain.com/applicationname
Is your virtual directory the same name as your application name? If so, that is why you see this.

Related

Can't get ASP.NET Web API 2 Help pages working when using Owin

I've installed the correct package for Web Api 2
Install-Package Microsoft.AspNet.WebApi.HelpPage -Pre
But the help area is not being mapped and is returning 404 (Web Api working fine). I'm using Microsoft.Owin.Host.SystemWeb as the host. Below is my Startup code.
public class Startup
{
public void Configuration(IAppBuilder app)
{
//Required for MVC areas new HttpConfiguration() doesn't work with MVC
var config = GlobalConfiguration.Configuration;
AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas();
WepApiStartup.Configure(config);
app.UseWebApi(config);
}
}
GlobalConfiguration.Configuration is web host specific HttpConfiguraiton, which should only be used with web host scenario. Use it with OWIN host will cause unexpected issues.
Please use the following code instead:
public class Startup
{
public static HttpConfiguration HttpConfiguration { get; private set; }
public void Configuration(IAppBuilder app)
{
HttpConfiguration = new HttpConfiguration();
AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas();
WebApiConfig.Register(HttpConfiguration);
app.UseWebApi(HttpConfiguration);
}
}
Replace all GlobalConfiguration.Configuration with Startup.HttpConfiguration in the project include help page files.
Found the solution after a lot of digging/trial and error. The issue is well described here: http://aspnetwebstack.codeplex.com/discussions/453068
UseWebApi and UseHttpMessageHandler don't call Next OWIN's middleware other than for 404. This means if you use UseWebApi that's it, Next is never called therefore you can't use it with any other middleware (Nancy or Web Api Help pages for example).
Thanks to #aliostad patch:
https://github.com/aliostad/CacheCow/blob/master/samples/UsingCacheCowWithNancyAndOwin/HttpMessageHandlerAdapterModified.cs#L43
You can get it working as expected. I hope the team merge the pull request for this as UseWebApi breaks the Owin design goals IMO.
Update 13 Feb 2014
I've written an Owin extension to workaround this:
internal static void UseWebApiAndHelp(this IAppBuilder app, HttpConfiguration config)
{
WepApiStartup.Configure(config);
app.UseHandlerAsync((request, response, next) =>
{
if (request.Path == "/") //app.Map using a regex exclude list would be better here so it doesn't fire for every request
{
response.StatusCode = 301;
response.SetHeader("Location", "/Help");
return Task.FromResult(0);
}
return next();
});
// Map the help path and force next to be invoked
app.Map("/help", appbuilder => appbuilder.UseHandlerAsync((request, response, next) => next()));
app.UseWebApi(config);
}
Update 01 July 2015
You can also host the help pages using WebApi instead of MVC, which is great for self host http://blogs.msdn.com/b/yaohuang1/archive/2012/12/20/making-asp-net-web-api-help-page-work-on-self-hosted-services.aspx
Update 10 September 2015
For Web Api I tried #hongye-sun answer and it works too, follow what #gspatel says by changing HelpPageAreaRegistration.RegisterArea and the HelpController's constructor. My workaround works as well so pick whatever one works best for your situation.
However I'm still getting the issue when using UseWebApi with other middleware and it not invoking Next() (seems to only happen when using IIS not self host). I've found my workaround of mapping the path and forcing next to be invoked is a valid workaround for all Owin middleware Nancy, Simple.Web etc.
Update 13 Jan 2016
I've developed Owin middleware to generate the ASP.NET Web API Help pages we know and love that completely solves this problem. My blog post explains the background to this issue in detail

Redirect permanently 301 in blogengine.net (global.asax)

i want to redirect my old address www.informarea.it/BlogEngine to new address www.informarea.it...
*my global.asax of blogengine.net is *
void Application_BeginRequest(object source, EventArgs e)
{
HttpApplication app = (HttpApplication)source;
HttpContext context = app.Context;
// Attempt to perform first request initialization
FirstRequestInitialization.Initialize(context);
}
*can i make to apply the code of redirect permanently? *
if (app.url.ToString().ToLower().Contains("http://www.informarea.it/BlogEngine"))
{
HttpContext.Current.Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently";
HttpContext.Current.Response.AddHeader("Location",url.Replace("http://www.informarea.it/blogengine", "http://www.informarea.it"));
}
Can Someone help me?
thank you very much
Fabry
This should redirect any query where the path starts with /BlogEngine to the same url with the /BlogEngine removed.
if(Request.Url.PathAndQuery.StartsWith("/BlogEngine", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase)) {
Response.RedirectPermanent(Request.Url.PathAndQuery.Substring(11), true);
}
Pros:
Gives a 301 Redirect like you requested
Keeps the rest of the path and query string intact for the following request
Cons:
Requires .net 4.0 (Version 2.7 of BlogEngine is targeted at 4.0 so I don't think this will be an issue.)

ASP.NET MVC Routing - differences in web site vs virtual directory

I have an ASP.NET MVC 3 application (in IIS 7.5) with a portable area. When I host the application consuming the portable area in a web site my routing works perfectly e.g.
http://localhost:9001/Clearance/Home/Search (this works)
However, when hosting in a virtual directory e.g.
http://localhost/Acme.Risks.Clearance.Web.Area.TestUI/Clearance/Home/Search (this does not work)
I get the following error:
Multiple types were found that match the controller named 'Home'. This can happen if the route that services this request ('Clearance/{controller}/{action}') does not specify namespaces to search for a controller that matches the request. If this is the case, register this route by calling an overload of the 'MapRoute' method that takes a 'namespaces' parameter.
I don't understand why, I am specifying namespaces it works fine when running in a web site.
Here is my portable area registration:
public override void RegisterArea(AreaRegistrationContext context, IApplicationBus bus)
{
if (context == null)
{
throw new ArgumentNullException("context");
}
base.RegisterArea(context, bus);
context.MapRoute(
RouteName.ClearanceAreaDefault,
this.AreaName + "/{controller}/{action}/{id}",
new { controller = "Home", action = "Search", id = UrlParameter.Optional },
new[] { typeof(HomeController).Namespace });
}
Here is the Global.asax for the web application in a virtual directory (does not work):
public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
{
routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");
routes.MapRoute(
"Default",
"{controller}/{action}/{id}",
new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional },
new[] { typeof(HomeController).Namespace });
}
Here is the Global.asax for the web application in a web site (does work):
public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
{
routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");
routes.MapRoute(
"Default",
"{controller}/{action}/{id}",
new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional },
new[] { "Acme.Risks.Web.UI.Controllers" });
}
I have used Phil Haack's "RouteDebugger" (http://nuget.org/packages/routedebugger) and the route debug information on both requests is identical.
Does anyone know why this is happening?
Thanks,
Callum
This was down to the namespace used in the data context for MVC.
My web area assembly is "Acme.Risks.Clearance.Web.Area".
My web site assembly is "Acme.Risks.Web.UI" (working).
My web area test UI assembly is "Acme.Risks.Clearance.Web.Area.TestUI" (not working).
The namespace used in the data context was "Acme.Risks.Clearance.Web.Area*", so in the case of the web area test UI the wildcard caused two matches. So even though the routing information was identical, ASP.NET MVC could not decide which was the right assembly because there were duplicate matches.

Handling URL's with AppHarbor without Modifying All My Controllers

I'm trying to host an MVC 3 application (FunnelWeb) on AppHarbor. For a reason that's still not clear to me, when my route is only a Controller+Action (e.g. mysite/admin is Admin+Index and mysite/login is Admin+login) everything works fine, but if I have anything else in the route (e.g. a variable like {*page}) my URL will be mysite:12345/mypage (where 12345 is a port number assigned by AppHarbor and mypage is the name of the page I'm requesting). This makes the request fail as the port 12345 is not publicly exposed.
AppHarbor uses load balancing to distribute the request between multiple IIS's. This is their way of doing stuff and this is why internally the requests are routed to some non-standard ports. I don't have a problem with that, but I have problem with MVC that tries to route me to that internal URL.
I'm not pointing fingers here; it's nobody's fault :) so let's move to the question:
Why there is a difference between requesting a route with Controller+Action only and requesting a route with a variable like {*page}? Be technical please :)
Here is an example of how to handle requests in AppHarbor, however, it seems that it requires me to modify all my controllers (OMG). Is there any way to implement this without modifying my controllers?
Any other suggestions are welcomed :)
Thanks in advance.
UPDATE: Coincidentally, the behaviour that I observed matches the conclusion that I reached. However, the issue has nothing to do with ASP.Net MVC routing. The short story is, FunnelWeb forces lowercase URL's, so, whenever it receives a request to a resource it convert it to lowercase, if needed, and issue a 301 response. The problem is, when creating the URL for the 301 response, the request URL (absolute URL) is now the URL used when the request made from the load balancer to IIS and not the one made from the client; hence, the request fails.
This is known issue with FunnelWeb url generation on AppHarbor. When using standard MVC methods to generate relative URLs, this is not a problem. AppHarbor has a short guide and sample on how the generate public URLs in the knowledge base.
It's possible that the following is now all you need:
<appSettings>
<!-- AppHarbor Setting to stop AppHb load balancer internal port numbers from showing up in URLs-->
<add key="aspnet:UseHostHeaderForRequestUrl" value="true" />
</appSettings>
This is noted as an update on AppHarbor's support page at http://support.appharbor.com/kb/getting-started/workaround-for-generating-absolute-urls-without-port-number
MSDN says the following about UseHostHeaderForRequestUrl:
aspnet:UseHostHeaderForRequestUrl - If this value attribute is false [default], the Url property is dynamically built from the host, port, and path provided by the web server. If this value attribute is true, the Url property is dynamically built by using the host and port provided by the incoming "Host" header and the path provided by the web server.
There is a way, but it requires a couple of classes.
When ASP.NET MVC registers a route, it defines a route handler. This route handler returns a HTTP handler that handles the request. If you use a custom route handler that returns a custom HTTP handler, you can rewrite the HTTP context by using a couple decorator classes.
Start by creating a HttpContextProxy and HttpRequestProxy that derives from the base classes and wraps all methods and properties to an inner instance. I've made the hard work available.
Next create the decorators, first the HTTP context decorator:
using System.Web;
public class HttpContextDecorator : HttpContextProxy
{
public HttpContextDecorator(HttpContextBase innerHttpContext)
: base(innerHttpContext)
{
}
public override HttpRequestBase Request
{
get
{
return new HttpRequestDecorator(base.Request);
}
}
}
The HTTP request decorator:
using System;
using System.Web;
public class HttpRequestDecorator : HttpRequestProxy
{
public HttpRequestDecorator(HttpRequestBase innerHttpRequest)
: base(innerHttpRequest)
{
}
public override bool IsSecureConnection
{
get
{
return string.Equals(Headers["X-Forwarded-Proto"], "https", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase);
}
}
public override Uri Url
{
get
{
var url = base.Url;
var urlBuilder = new UriBuilder(url);
if (IsSecureConnection)
{
urlBuilder.Port = 443;
urlBuilder.Scheme = "https";
}
else
{
urlBuilder.Port = 80;
}
return urlBuilder.Uri;
}
}
public override string UserHostAddress
{
get
{
const string forwardedForHeader = "HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR";
var forwardedFor = ServerVariables[forwardedForHeader];
if (forwardedFor != null)
{
return forwardedFor;
}
return base.UserHostAddress;
}
}
}
As mentioned, you also need to override the MVC classes - here the HTTP handler:
using System;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Mvc;
using System.Web.Routing;
public class CustomMvcHandler : MvcHandler
{
public CustomMvcHandler(RequestContext requestContext)
: base(requestContext)
{
requestContext.HttpContext = new HttpContextDecorator(requestContext.HttpContext);
}
protected override IAsyncResult BeginProcessRequest(HttpContextBase httpContext, AsyncCallback callback, object state)
{
httpContext = new HttpContextDecorator(httpContext);
return base.BeginProcessRequest(httpContext, callback, state);
}
protected override void ProcessRequest(HttpContextBase httpContext)
{
httpContext = new HttpContextDecorator(httpContext);
base.ProcessRequest(httpContext);
}
}
Then the route handler:
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Mvc;
using System.Web.Routing;
public class CustomMvcRouteHandler : MvcRouteHandler
{
protected override IHttpHandler GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext)
{
return new CustomMvcHandler(requestContext);
}
}
Finally, you'll need to replace the associated handler for all registered routes (or map them properly from the beginning):
var routes = RouteTable.Routes.OfType<Route>().Where(x => x.RouteHandler is MvcRouteHandler);
foreach (var route in routes)
{
route.RouteHandler = new CustomMvcRouteHandler();
}

asp.net mvc 3 and static resources 404'ing when using "Local IIS Web server"

Here's the situation:
ASP.NET MVC 3 application using Razor as the view engine.
Works fine under Visual Studio Development Server (Cassini)
However, when I switch over to "Use Local IIS Web server", the site functions, but every static resource 404s (again, there were no issues under Cassini).
ASP.NET 4.0, Windows 7 Ultimate x64, IIS 7.5, Integrated Pipeline, Network Service as app pool identity.
Specifically, an exception for trying to access a static file that is known to exist (i.e. remove application files, specifically DLLs with route information, etc. and it is served up without issue). Again, this occurs for all static files including i.e. /public/scripts/jquery.js:
Error in Path :/favicon.ico
Raw Url :/favicon.ico
Message :Path '/favicon.ico' was not found.
Source :System.Web
Stack Trace : at System.Web.HttpNotFoundHandler.ProcessRequest(HttpContext context)
at System.Web.HttpApplication.CallHandlerExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute()
at System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously)
TargetSite :Void ProcessRequest(System.Web.HttpContext) NLogLogger.Fatal => NLogLogger.Fatal => LoggerImpl.Write
I'm baffled. I've verified that a test default ASP.NET MVC 3 app runs fine under both VS Development Server and Local IIS Web server on this machine.
My hope is that someone else has run into a similar issue. In case it helps, here are my routes:
public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
{
routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");
routes.IgnoreRoute("favicon.ico");
routes.MapRoute(
"Login", // Route name
"login", // URL with parameters
new { controller = "Session", action = "Create" } // Parameter defaults
);
routes.MapRoute(
"Logout", // Route name
"logout", // URL with parameters
new { controller = "Session", action = "Delete" } // Parameter defaults
);
routes.MapRoute(
"Default", // Route name
"{controller}/{action}/{id}", // URL with parameters
new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults
);
}
Of course, it turns out to be something extremely simple: there was an HttpHandler defined in the root Web.config instead of just the View directory's Web.config
<handlers>
<remove name="BlockViewHandler" />
<add name="BlockViewHandler" path="*" verb="*" preCondition="integratedMode" type="System.Web.HttpNotFoundHandler" />
</handlers>
Obvious now, but hopefully by posting here it might save somebody else wasting time on something so obvious. See http://haacked.com/archive/2008/06/25/aspnetmvc-block-view-access.aspx for more info.

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