ASP.NET MVC Hide Content Directory in url

Question

I've been asked to see if it's possible to prevent the Content directory from appearing as part of the url in an Asp.Net MVC 3.0 application. For example at present when I want to view an image in the sub directory of the Content folder the url is as follows:

http://localhost:[port]/Content/sub/test.bmp

While we are looking to display it simply as follows:

http://localhost:[port]/sub/test.bmp

Test.bmp will still physically exist in the sub directory of the Content folder on the server we just want to hide the Content part.

Any suggestions? I can see ways of masking controllers but not directories.

Answer 1

You could write a controller action which will take as an argument the filename and serve it from the sub directory. Then configure a route for this controller action so that it is accessible with sub/{filename} .

Answer 2

Solution is as follows (this is just the barebones code at the moment and needs to be tidied up):

Added this route to Global.asax :

routes.MapRoute("Content",
                "{dir}/{file}",
                new { controller = "Content", action = "LoadContent"});

Added this controller to handle the request:

namespace demos
{
   public class ContentController : Controller
    {
        public ActionResult LoadContent(string dir, string file)
        {
            string fileName = Server.MapPath(Url.Content("~/Content/" + dir)) 
            fileName += "\\" + file;            

            // stream file if exists    
            FileInfo info = new FileInfo(fileName);
            if (info.Exists)
                return File(info.OpenRead(), MimeType(fileName));


            // else return null - file not found
            return null;            
        }


        private string MimeType(string filename)
        {
            string mime = "application/octetstream";
            var extension = Path.GetExtension(filename);
            if (extension != null)
            {
               RegistryKey rk = Registry.ClassesRoot.OpenSubKey(extension.ToLower());

                if (rk != null && rk.GetValue("Content Type") != null)
                    mime = rk.GetValue("Content Type").ToString();
            }

            return mime;
        }
    }
}