Using Application_BeginRequest for url rewriting

asp.neturl-rewriting

Up till now we've been rewriting URL's using a custon 404 page: the url would not map to any file in the site, and we configured the IIS to send 404 error to a aspx page which redirected those url's to the correct URL.
Now we want to stop using redirects, so after reading Scott Guthrie's article on Url Rewriting, I want to use the Application_BeginRequest in Global.asax. The thing is that a lot of our url's are not rewrites, and can get to the right place without any intervention. I'm worried that now every single request is going to have to go through the Application_BeginRequest method (even the un-rewritten url's), and I'm afraid it will slow down their loading time.
What do you think? Is loading time an issue when using Application_BeginRequest?

Best Solution

Every request goes through Application_BeginRequest anyway.

You'll need to add some logic so only those pages that need to be rewritten are changed.

That small bit of logic won't be very expensive.

I've used it, and didn't notice performance suffering at all.

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Use commas in a URL

Commas are allowed in the filename part of a URL, but are reserved characters in the domain*, as far as I know.

What version of IE are you using? I've come across the odd report of IE5.5 truncating URLs on a comma (link here, but have tested URLs with commas in IE7 and it seems to be OK, so if there was an IE bug, it doesn't seem to be there any more - could it be an IIS issue?

I'm wondering if the page error is due to a rule failure with the mod_rewrite - can you post the rule which is matching multiple ids and passing them off to your Foo.aspx? Is there any chance that it's only matching Foo.N,N, and failing on more commas?

* From the URI RFC:

2.2. Reserved Characters

Many URI include components consisting of or delimited by, certain special characters. These characters are called "reserved", since their usage within the URI component is limited to their reserved purpose. If the data for a URI component would conflict with the reserved purpose, then the conflicting data must be escaped before forming the URI.
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                "$" | ","
The "reserved" syntax class above refers to those characters that are allowed within a URI, but which may not be allowed within a particular component of the generic URI syntax

Javascript – How to modify the URL without reloading the page

This can now be done in Chrome, Safari, Firefox 4+, and Internet Explorer 10pp4+!

See this question's answer for more information: Updating address bar with new URL without hash or reloading the page

Example:

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You can then use window.onpopstate to detect the back/forward button navigation:

window.onpopstate = function(e){
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For a more in-depth look at manipulating browser history, see this MDN article.

Best Solution

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