Getting full url of any file in ASP.Net MVC

Question

I want to generate complete Url (with domain name etc) of any file in MVC. Example: A .jpg file or an exe file.

Example: If I give "~/images/abc.jpg" it should return "http://www.mywebsite.com/images/abc.jpg"

I am aware of the Url.Action overload that takes the protocol as a parameter. But Url.Action can be used only for Actions.

I want something like Url.Content function that takes protocol as a parameter.

Do you know if any method to get complete url of any file?

I have tried: VirtualPathUtility.ToAbsolute, ResolveClientUrl, ResolveUrl but all of these don't seem to work.

Thanks.

Answer 1

I'm afraid I don't have a complete answer but I can hopefully point you in the right direction.

You can look at the source code for ASP.NET MVC and see how the Html.ActionLink helper is implemented in the "mega overload" that takes in a bunch of parameters. It has all the login in there to handle null values for missing parameters. Just look at all the code paths that handle the null values for missing host, port, protocol, and so forth. By combining it all you should be able to write your own method that produces a fully qualified URL.

I don't know of any built-in method in ASP.NET to do this (but I'm also not sure that there isn't one).

Answer 2

Here is the answer for you http://stephenwalther.com/blog/archive/2009/02/18/asp.net-mvc-tip-47-ndash-using-resolveurl-in-an-html.aspx Stephan Walther explain with example.

We followed the same link to solve our problem.

Happy coding

Answer 3

you can use the following code to replace "~/" to absoulute URL.

System.Web.VirtualPathUtility.ToAbsolute("~/")

Edit: First you need to define a method.

public static string ResolveServerUrl(string serverUrl, bool forceHttps)
        {
            if (serverUrl.IndexOf("://") > -1)
                return serverUrl;

            string newUrl = serverUrl;
            Uri originalUri = System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Request.Url;
            newUrl = (forceHttps ? "https" : originalUri.Scheme) +
                     "://" + originalUri.Authority + newUrl;
            return newUrl;
        } 

Now call this method will return the complete absolure url.

ResolveServerUrl(VirtualPathUtility.ToAbsolute("~/images/image1.gif"),false))

The output will be http://www.yourdomainname.com/images/image1.gif