IIS Rewrite Rule using Url Path segments

Question

I'm trying to write, hopefully, a single rewrite rule for a number of URLs that are being moved to a different structure. All of the URLs have a very similar structure so I'm thinking there must be a way to write a single rule for all of them.

Example:

http://example.com/some/deep/path/a/001/my-a-data
http://example.com/some/deep/path/a/002/my-a-data2
http://example.com/some/deep/path/b/001/my-b-data
http://example.com/some/deep/path/b/002/my-b-data2
http://example.com/some/deep/path/c/001/my-c-data
http://example.com/some/deep/path/c/002/my-c-data2

Need to redirect to (respectively):

http://example.com/a/my-a-data
http://example.com/a/my-a-data2
http://example.com/b/my-b-data
http://example.com/b/my-b-data2
http://example.com/c/my-c-data
http://example.com/c/my-c-data2

So what I'm trying to know is if there is a way to read the segments of the PATH in the URL so I can just reuse them to build the final URL because it is all there. It is just a simplification of the URL.

Perhaps to do something like

                  /{1}/{2}/{3}/{4}/{5}/{6}
http://example.com/some/deep/path/a/001/my-a-data  ->  http://example.com/{4}/{6}

Is that possible?

Thanks!!!

Answer 1

It is recommended to use([^/])+ instead of (.*). If there are multiple slash in your URL, the capture group would be corrupted.

For example:

Best regards,

Sam

Answer 2

I found how it works.

Each segment in the URL path can be identified with {R} parameters in the rewrite rules. To match my URL structure I created the following rule:

<rule name="Documents redirection" stopProcessing="true">
  <match url="^some/deep/path/(.*)/(.*)/(.*)$" ignoreCase="true" />
  <action type="Redirect" url="/{R:1}/{R:3}" redirectType="Permanent" />
</rule>

Each of the (.*) segments are what the IIS Rewrite module recognizes as {R} parameter, so for my need, I needed the first and third parameter to form a new URL. I can safely ignore the second parameter.

I hope this helps someone else.