Custom VirtualPathProvider not being used in IIS6

Question

Hi,

I added the following lines to Application_Start method in global.asax:

var provider = new TestVirtualPathProvider();
HostingEnvironment.RegisterVirtualPathProvider(provider);

Yet the 'TestVirtualPathProvider' is never used when deploying this application in IIS6 (it does in the ASP.NET Development Server).

Edit: the default path provider has always done its job correctly and served (non-embedded) views correctly. The problem is simply that I want to use my own path provider to provide embedded views. So, initially, I already had the following wildcard mapping configured:

Any possible reasons why this does not work in IIS6? Are there any other factors (handlers for example) wich might influence the used VirtualPathProvider?

Answer 1

UPDATE: the fact that you want to handle extension-less URL's is an important point that's not mentioned in the question. Please see this page for help in setting up MVC with IIS 6: http://haacked.com/archive/2008/11/26/asp.net-mvc-on-iis-6-walkthrough.aspx. This should cover your scenario as well.

---

Most likely the same issue that I answered in this thread: http://forums.asp.net/t/995633.aspx

Basically, add this in your web.config:

<httpHandlers>
  <add path="*" verb="GET,HEAD,POST" type="System.Web.StaticFileHandler" validate="true" />
</httpHandlers>

That other thread has some details that explain why this is necessary.

Answer 2

I believe that you need to use an ISAPI filter in IIS6 to intercept URLs without extensions. Problem is that ISAPI will need to be done in c/c++.

Answer 3

IIS6 is configured to allow only certain extensions to be processed by the ASP.net pipeline. To findout how you can redirct requests check out the post by DocV.