How to tell if a user is visiting "/Default.aspx" or just "/"

Question

I am writing in the Application_BeginRequest part of my Global.asax.cs.

For SEO purposes, I'm trying to redirect users that are looking at:

http://www.example.com/Default.aspx

to:

http://www.example.com/

My question is:

How can I tell which the user is looking at? I've been using:

HttpContext.Current.Request.Url.*

But all the parameters are identical regardless of which one I am visiting.

Answer 1

You can get the path entered in the user's browser with:

string path = Request.RawUrl;

MSDN

Answer 2

Im pretty sure this particular redirect happens at an IIS level not inside your application logic, prehaps turn off the default page stuff in IIS?

Answer 3

If your are using IIS 7.x, you should look at this tutorial: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/....
It explains how to setup redirect for SEO.

If you can't use the <rewrite> tag in your web.config, this post should help: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/363231/...

Answer 4

For a request to:

http://domain.com/

when referenced from the Begin_Request event in an HttpModule:

HttpContext.HttpRequest.Url.AbsolutePath == "/"
... Url.AbsoluteUri = "http://domain.com/"
... Url.LocalPath = "/"

If you're not seeing those values from Application_BeginRequest, you might need to register a separate HttpModule. Global.asax events are only called for managed HttpHandlers, so they may not be called until after IIS does an internal redirect (transfer) to "/default.aspx".

You may also need to disable default document handling in IIS for this to work in the direction you're interested in (most sites redirect from / to /default.aspx, not the other way around).

Edit: another idea. Register a new extension as an ASP.NET page handler, with a build provider (in web.config) -- maybe *.asph or something like that. Then rename your existing default.aspx to default.asph. Next, add default.asph to the top of the list of default files in IIS, replacing default.aspx. Create a new default.aspx file, whose only function in the code behind is to redirect to /. That should do it.

Answer 5

If it's just SEO you are concerned about, then you can use the the canonical "tag".

If you place this in your Default.aspx page:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.mysite.com/" />

Google will always index

http://www.mysite.com/Default.aspx

as

http://www.mysite.com/

preventing both pages being indexed and competing in the search results.

You can read more here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html

Answer 6

You may try

HttpContext.Current.Request.Url.*

with wrong parameters:

so get your site visitor url by :

Request.AppRelativeCurrentExecutionFilePath 

for more info:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.web.httprequest.apprelativecurrentexecutionfilepath.aspx

Please provide more info and your try about your issue

Answer 7

If you request http://www.site.com/, it will redirect to http://www.site.com/default.aspx long before your code runs (this is visible to the browser of all things!).

I believe this means checking the value of HTTP-Referer will tell you what you want to know.

How to get HTTP Referer: Getting the HTTP Referrer in ASP.NET

Now then, if the user visited http://www.site.com, your code sees http://www.site.com/default.aspx called with referer of http://www.site.com. This doesn't tell you where they came from, but it does tell you they accessed the site directly.

You have the advantage here that most search engines follow the redirect and grab the actual page, so the referer value is usable to tell if the user came from a search engine or not. However, for other cases, you're better off walking the IIS logs.

Notice that due to the infrastructure in ASP.NET redirecting / to /default.aspx, you cannot redirect /default.aspx to / without creating an infinite loop. If you want to serve / directly, you're going to need a shim in front of IIS.

Answer 8

Request.url will give you the current url which is opened in the browser window. You can use this to code something you want.

You can also do this by using iis. Set Default.aspx as your default page and whenever someone opens your site the address will be www.yoursite.com\

If you are trying to hide your current url from the user then its not recommended but you can use url rewrite for iis

Answer 9

The best way to know what it's in the user's browser location is via javascript.

If you want to redirect everyone from Default.aspx back to just www.mysite.com, you can do something like this:

$(document).ready(function() { 
 if(window.location.href == "http://www.mysite.com/Default.aspx")
  window.location.href = "http://www.mysite.com/"
});

Note: this relies on jquery for $(document), but you get the idea

Answer 10

Use a combination of routing and the IIS rewrite module. You may need to tweak this to suit a bit for the trailing slash (if you want one or not). I also have all my page names in lowercase. Using this will all but ensure a consistent 301 Permanent Redirect for your default.aspx page and fall in line with SEO best practices.

in Global.asax:

<%@ Import Namespace="System.Web.Routing" %>
<%@ Application Language="C#" %>

<script runat="server">

    void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) 
    {
        RouteTable.Routes.MapPageRoute("default", string.Empty, "~/default.aspx");       
    }

and then in your web.config:

<rewrite>
  <rules>    
    <rule name="Default Document" stopProcessing="true">
      <match url="(.*?)/?default\.aspx$" ignoreCase="true" />
      <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" redirectType="Permanent" />
    </rule>   
  </rules>
</rewrite>

If your not familiar with routing, you would then access the home page in a link as such:

<asp:HyperLink ID="homeLink" runat="server" NavigateUrl="<%$RouteUrl:RouteName=default %>">HOME</asp:HyperLink>