IIS7 URL Rewriting Module Replace

Question

I really like the IIS7 URL rewriting module and so far, it worked great for me.

There is one thing that I'm not sure how to do: I would like to permanently redirect all URLs that have encoded spaces (%20) in them to a URL that has the spaces replaced with a dash (-).

So this:

http://www.test.com/About%20Our%20Mission.aspx

should be redirected to this:

http://www.test.com/About-Our-Mission.aspx

Is that even possible with only regular expressions?

Answer 1

There's no way to do directly what you want.

You might settle for something like this:

^(.*)%20(.*)%20(.*)%20(.*)  replaced by:  {R:1}-{R:2}-{R:3}-{R:4}
^(.*)%20(.*)%20(.*)         replaced by:  {R:1}-{R:2}-{R:3}
^(.*)%20(.*)                replaced by:  {R:1}-{R:2}

Answer 2

One of then nice things about .aspx is how easy it is to rewrite URLs with real code. Just add a little search and replace code to your web site's Global.asax file:

protected void Application_BeginRequest(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    string path = HttpContext.Current.Request.Path;
    // Search and replace, RegEx, etc.
    HttpContext.Current.RewritePath(path);
}

On IIS7, you have to add some entries in web.config to handle rewriting non .aspx URLs:

<system.webServer>
    <handlers>
        <clear/>
        <add name="Brands1" path="Brands/*.html" verb="*" type="ASP.global_asax" resourceType="Unspecified"/>
        <add name="Brands2" path="Brands/\?*.html" verb="*" type="ASP.global_asax" resourceType="Unspecified"/>
        <!-- ... -->

The IIS7 URL rewriting module is great, but just because you have a hammer...

Answer 3

The same may be achieved in one rule with ISAPI_Rewrite 3 or Helicon Ape for any number of %20s:

RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^(.*)%20(.*)$ $1-$2 [LP,R=301,L]

Answer 4

You can write Custom Rewrite Provider to do any manipulation you want with the original url. But that involves more than regular expression only. More details here .

Answer 5

Perhaps I'm mad, but this seems to work...

Use a URL_Rewrite rule using Regular Expressions with this pattern:

^(.*) (.*)

Redirect to

{R:1}-{R:2}

I've tested this with a single space or many spaces and it works fine for me using IIS 10. Note that it works just as well for %20 as it does for " " in the URL string, cheers.