Can I get information about the IIS7 virtual directory from Application_Start?

Question

I have 3 IIS7 virtual directories which point to the same physical directory. Each one has a unique host headers bound to it and each one runs in its own app pool. Ultimately, 3 instances of the same ASP.NET application.

In the Application_Start event handler of global.asax I would like to identify which instance of the application is running (to conditionally execute some code). Since the Request object is not available, I cannot interrogate the current URL so I would like to interrogate the binding information of the current virtual directory?

Since the host header binding is unique for each site, it would allow me to identify which application instance is starting up. Does anyone know how to do this or have a better suggestion?

Answer 1

When a request is made, and just prior to the HttpApplication instance being created, ASP.NET initializes core objects such as HttpContext, HttpRequest and HttpResponse which means they will exist when you get to the Application_Start event in Global.asax. Thus, in Application_Start, you can get the requesting url like so:

var url = this.Context.Request.Url;