Dots in URL causes 404 with ASP.NET mvc and IIS

user_724310 0
Viewed 107584

I have a project that requires my URLs have dots in the path. For example I may have a URL such as www.example.com/people/michael.phelps

URLs with the dot generate a 404. My routing is fine. If I pass in michaelphelps, without the dot, then everything works. If I add the dot I get a 404 error. The sample site is running on Windows 7 with IIS8 Express. URLScan is not running.

I tried adding the following to my web.config:

<security>
  <requestFiltering allowDoubleEscaping="true"/>
</security>

Unfortunately that didn't make a difference. I just receive a 404.0 Not Found error.

This is a MVC4 project but I don't think that's relevant. My routing works fine and the parameters I expect are there, until they include a dot.

What do I need to configure so I can have dots in my URL?

iis-8 iis-express iis-7 iis asp.net-mvc
18 Answers

Depending on how important it is for you to keep your URI without querystrings, you can also just pass the value with dots as part of the querystring, not the URI.

E.g. www.example.com/people?name=michael.phelps will work, without having to change any settings or anything.

You lose the elegance of having a clean URI, but this solution does not require changing or adding any settings or handlers.

user_346830
user_64604490

Add URL Rewrite rule to Web.config archive. You need to have the URL Rewrite module already installed in IIS. Use the following rewrite rule as inspiration for your own.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>

<system.webServer>
  <rewrite>
    <rules>
      <rule name="Add trailing slash for some URLs" stopProcessing="true">
        <match url="^(.*(\.).+[^\/])$" />
          <conditions>
              <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" />
              <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" />
          </conditions>
          <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" />
      </rule>
    </rules>
    </rewrite>
</system.webServer>

</configuration>
user_16989640

Also, (related) check the order of your handler mappings. We had a .ashx with a .svc (e.g. /foo.asmx/bar.svc/path) in the path after it. The .svc mapping was first so 404 for the .svc path which matched before the .asmx. Havn't thought too much but maybe url encodeing the path would take care of this.

user_14723410
user_66831400
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