Using IIS 7 Redirect Module or coding your own

Question

What's the difference in using the IIS Redirect module to redirect vs. just coding your own and playing with the Response.context? To me it doesn't make a difference, they both do the same thing and it's much easier to just use the redirect module in IIS as it appears to redirect relatively anyway! Same as this code is doing in lets say a global.asax:

app.Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently"; app.Response.AddHeader("Location", newLocation);

Am I not right? you can do the same thing 2 different ways! IIS or code! Using IIS just puts this into your app's web.config:

<httpRedirect enabled="false" destination="http://www.domainToRedirectTo.com/" exactDestination="false" httpResponseStatus="Permanent" />

nice and simple! exactDestination is false, so it will redirect relatively based off of the destination.

I want to hear arguments against using one way vs. the other because I don't see an argument that benefits either way. The both satisfy the same goal.

Answer 1

There is no difference in the way you have put it. A coded version allows you to react on input at runtime and use the code to redirect people to different pages --e.g., for a login.aspx page this might be a redirect to login-failed-page.aspx or login-succesfull-page.aspx. If its just hard-coded there is no difference.

Remember that redirects are not just meant to indicate permanent relocation of URL's. 301 is just one of the redirects. You may want to redirect people to a temporary message (redirect code 307) -- e.g., if you are working for apple and Steve Jobs is giving a keynote -- i.e., redirecting the store to a "Steve Jobs is giving a keynote and we are updating the store" page. In this example its far better to flick a switch and have your entire web-farm pick up the change via runtime logic than having to update the config files of all your IIS servers. Each redirect has its own purpose.