How to specify url mappings in ASP.NET 4.0 when parameters are involved?

Question

The problem

I have a web site with some articles inside. Articles are accessed using a database writing results on a single page. When a certain article is to be accessed, I need the article-id and I only need to get to the page: http://www.mysite/Articles.aspx?a={article-id}.

This is nice but not really friendly and not scalable. What I want to do is to redirect every url in the form: http://www.mysite/articles/{article-id} to the page http://www.mysite/Articles.aspx?a={article-id}.

I know that using Web.Config I can use the urlMappings settings, but do not know how to insert a regex there.

Some notes

Please consider that I would like to have a simple translation tool. I do not want to edit my existing pages. This solution should be as transparent as possible to my application components.

What is the best practice to get to the solution?

Answer 1

I think you should use:

1. ASP.NET Routing

Eg.:

protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);
}

public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
{
    routes.MapPageRoute("Articles",
        "articles/{article-id}/",
        "~/Articles.aspx");
}

& on "Articles.aspx.cs" you can get the "article-id" using:

string article-id = Page.RouteData.Values["article-id"] as string;

2. Using the URL Rewrite Module

3. urlrewriter.net