Can I have 'friendly' url's without a URL rewriter in IIS?

Question

Without having a url rewriter such as ISAPI_Rewrite available, is it possible to achieve the following:

I would like a user to browse to http://www.jjj.com/directory where /directory does not actually exist. IIS transfers the user to not-found.cfm.

At this point I can serve index.cfm i.e. http://www.jjj.com/directory/index.cfm.

The url will display just fine and the page loads even though the directory or index.cfm doesn't exist. However I'd like to be able to not have index.cfm in the url.

Ideal:

1. Page Request to http://www.jjj.com/directory

2. IIS loads not-found.cfm as the default 404 errorhandler.

3. Not found strips the CGI.query_string and uses cfswitches to funnel the user to the appropriate controller function. May use onMissingTemplate?

4. The page request never changes in the URL and the page loads transparently the user with 200 OK status

5. If a user requests http://www.jjj.com/directory/index.cfm I would 301 redirect to http://www.jjj.com/directory

Current:

1. Page Request to http://www.jjj.com/directory

2. IIS loads not-found.cfm as default 404 error handler.

3. Not found strips the CGI.query_string and uses cfswitches to funnel the user to the appropriate controller function.

4. The page request changes to http://www.jjj.com/directory/index.cfm with a 200 OK status

Answer 1

You're asking how to cut something but telling us you're not allowed to use a knife or anything resembling one.

Here's my only clever idea using onMissingTemplate().

GET /directory/
-> 404.cfm
-> <cfinclude template="#cgi.script_name#/special.cfm" />
-> fires onMissingTemplate() where you ignore the "special.cfm" bit and just use the rest of the requested path to figure out what controller to wire up to.

This is a kludgy hack, though, so I would try to avoid it myself. Maybe if you explain why ISAPI Rewriting isn't an option, then we might be able to help further.

Answer 2

You can tell IIS to have 404 and 403 errors execute a custom URL on your site (such as /urlhandler.cfm).

Then, you can parse the 'cgi.query_string' and route the application anyway you desire using cfinclude to simply include the correct 'template.cfm', or, you can reformat the input your framework is expecting, or, use a project like http://coldcourse.riaforge.org/.

Just one note, IIS will give you a URL that looks like this: '404;http://yoursite.com/the/url/you/wanted/to/route'.

Answer 3

Is IIS7 on the approved list of software? That can get you native url rewriting and side-step the whole issue.

Second option -- my CFM voodoo is rusty, but I think you can setup IIS6 to look for a CFM page (like you are doing) but then step in at the application level and do the url rewriting/repointing before it actually hits the 404 page.

Another way around it -- find an ISAPI url rewriter that is, say, under the MIT license. Build your own copy. Then have them install that as part of your software package.