How do I redirect WebForms URLs to their MVC equivalents in an ASP.NET MVC 4 solution?

Question

I've found many different variations of this question, but nothing that seems to be exactly what I'm trying to attempt, so please excuse me if it has already been answered.

I have an old WebForms solution that I have completed converted to MVC 4 (C#). I have both projects in separate solutions. I want to completely remove the old WebForms project, solution, and deployed files and redeploy the new MVC 4 site in it's place. That being the case, I don't want to kill all the old URLs. For example, in the WebForms site you could go to:

http://mysite.com/Customers.aspx

in MVC 4, that URL is now:

http://mysite.com/Customers

I would like to setup a Route or a Redirect rule that handles scenarios like that. I'm even fine adding many rules manually as the site really isn't that big. I feel like this should be pretty straightforward, but I'm really new to this space and just can't quite seem to figure out where or what I should be adding.

Answer 1

Try using custom filters like such: (this code hasn't been tested with your scenario, but I've used my base Redirect to SSL which has been tested)...

using System.Web.Mvc;   
namespace Libraries.Web.Attributes
{
    public class RedirectASPXAttribute : FilterAttribute, IAuthorizationFilter
    {
        public void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)
        {
            var request = filterContext.HttpContext.Request;
            if (request.Url != null && request.Contains(".aspx"))
            {
                var manipulatedRawUrl = request.RawUrl.Remove(request.RawUrl.LastIndexOf(".aspx"), 5);
                filterContext.Result = new RedirectResult("http://" + request.Url.Host + manipulatedRawUrl);
            }
        }
    }
}

Then, you simply decorate the controllers with the attributes:

[RedirectASPX]
public class HomeController : Controller
{

}

Hopefully this will at least point you in the right direction.

Answer 2

I finally figured this out thanks to @brenton pointing me in the right direction. Full set of steps for anybody who does this after me.

Install the URL Rewrite module in your IIS instance(s) found here:

http://www.iis.net/learn/extensions/url-rewrite-module/using-the-url-rewrite-module

Visual Studio's Intellisense won't know about the rewrite module so follow the instructions here to add it (not required):

https://stackoverflow.com/a/8624558/45077

After that, add the following block into the <system.WebServer> section of your Web.config file:

<rewrite>
<rules>
    <rule name="Redirect ASPX File to MVC" stopProcessing="true">
        <match url="(.*)\.aspx" />
        <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}" appendQueryString="false" />
    </rule>
</rules>
</rewrite>