Using IIRF to redirect to a PDF

Question

I'm using IIRF to redirect certain URLs to specific PDF files. For instance, for the URL /newsletter/2010/02 I'd like it to redirect to /pdf/newsletters/Feb2010.pdf. I'm not too hot at regular expressions, but I created the following rule:

RedirectRule ^/newsletter/2010/01   /pdf/newsletters/Newsletter012010.pdf   [I,R=301]

and it does redirect, but the address bar doesn't change, and when trying to save the file it wants to save as 01 instead of Feb2010.pdf. I don't presume my users will be savvy enough to enter a PDF extension before saving, and they shouldn't have to. Is there anything I can do about this?

Answer 1

Two suggestions:

• clear your browser cache
• Redirect to a full URL. instead of /pdf/newsletters/Foo.pdf, redirect to http://server/pdf/foo.pdf

It's strange that it wants to use 01 as the file. Surprising. Are you sure the browser is sending a new request? Use Fiddler to verify. A redirect should result in the browser address bar getting updated, ALWAYS. If you get a 301 you will see it very clearly in the Fiddler trace.

If you don't see the expected 301, Is it possible that you previously used a RewriteRule in the ini file, and the browser cached the result, and now when you ask for /newsletter/2010/01 , you are getting the cached result, rather than the redirected URL from IIRF? Clear your browser cache and request it again, to test this.

I guess it would be easy to just clear the browser cache and re-try it, without even checking Fiddler.