IIS Intermittent Change of Rewrite Settings

Question

I have my application build based on CodeIgniter, and the application running on IIS7.5 on a Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard.

We also have 4 separate databases, one of each operating state which runs on the same server. (i know probably not best practice, but its what i have been given to work with. i was not original designer).

So my folder structure goes like this, and is duplicated for each state.

wwwroot/
  |
  |-{STATE}/
  |----|index.php //CI Index.php
  |-{STATE}/
  |----|index.php //CI Index.php

The state folders are windows directories with names written in Capitals.

each folder has a web.config file to rewrite uri requests to index.php

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
    <system.webServer>
        <httpErrors errorMode="Detailed" />
        <asp scriptErrorSentToBrowser="true" />

        <rewrite>
        <rules>
            <rule name="RuleRemoveIndex" stopProcessing="true">
                <match url="^(.*)$" ignoreCase="true" />
                <conditions>
                        <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" />
                        <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" />
                </conditions>
                <action type="Rewrite" url="index.php?{R:1}" appendQueryString="true" />
            </rule>
        </rules>
        </rewrite>
    </system.webServer>
</configuration>

now here is where i am confused.

The application some times works, and sometimes does not work depending on weather the state component (https://{SUB}.{DOMAIN}:{PORT}/{STATE}/{URI}) is written in capitals or not.

When i originally put it up on the server, i tested it with lower case letters {state} and everything worked fine. I came back the next day, and found that using the lower case letters would give me a CodeIgniter 404 error. But if i used Capital letters {STATE} it would work find. and then it would change around again later.

after doing some url rewite testing using same principles here: http://www.iis.net/learn/extensions/url-rewrite-module/creating-rewrite-rules-for-the-url-rewrite-module but changed to php, i noticed that

I also did some URL REWRITE testing to see what the outcomes of the URL Rewrites were, based on the aspx version here: http://www.iis.net/learn/extensions/url-rewrite-module/creating-rewrite-rules-for-the-url-rewrite-module but changed to php. What i found was that $_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME'] was retaining the first way in which the the {STATE} was being type (Capital or lower case). My temporary fix is simply what i am sure is bad practice, I added this script to the start of my index.php file

$_script_name = $_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME'];
$_script_name_array = explode('/', $_script_name);
$_script_name_array[1] = strtolower($_script_name_array[1]);
$_script_name = implode('/', $_script_name_array);
$_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME']=$_script_name;

which has half fixed the issue, it basically forces the use of states in lower case. It would be nice if a solution could be found so that it doesn't matter if the {state} is written in capitals or not.

I was hoping someone on here might have some idea's.

Answer 1

IIS Rewrite would be handy in this case

Add the following code to your web.config file located in the root of your web folder.

<rule name="LowerCaseRule" stopProcessing="true">
<match url="[A-Z]" ignoreCase="false" />
<action type="Redirect" url="{ToLower:{URL}}" />
</rule>

Here URL Rewrite you can find more details on it. Hope this will help you.