How to determine if the default document was served in traditional ASP?

Question

In a file called index.asp, which is set up in IIS as a default document for the directory, I'm trying to determine via .asp VBScript if the page was called as the default document versus directly by name, i.e. I'm trying to distinguish between these two cases server-side:

http://someurl/

http://someurl/index.asp

I know how to do this in ASP.NET, but the same "server variables" don't seem to be available. The server variables that do deal with the URL and script name (PATH_ INFO, SCRIPT_NAME, URL) all return "index.asp" regardless of which way the script is called.

A Google search falls short on this one. Any ideas?

Answer 1

How about this...
Create a new file IndexDefault.asp and set it as the default document
In IndexDefault.asp make it a redirect to Index.asp
In IndexDefault.asp check the referrer for the IndexDefault.asp.

Answer 2

The server won't know, but the client will. In JavaScript you can examine the location.href, then pass that value back to the server using an Ajax call to whatever logging mechanism you want.

Answer 3

Similar to an earlier answer, but creating a new page, call it homepage.asp, which has either #INCLUDE FILE="index.asp" or having it do a server.transfer or server.execute of index.asp would hold the Request.ServerVariables script name in tact as homepage.asp as the request object won't change script name once it is passed into ASP. Then you could just test on this value, and you wouldn't have to rely on referrer or have to do the redirect. This would still mean you gotta change default document though.

Answer 4

Diodeus is correct, client-side JavaScript seems to be the only way to detect the URL. All the other options require differentiating the content page and the default document page into separate files. All I'm really trying to do it condense both requests down into the default document URL (redirecting in the case where index.asp is requested directly).

To satisfy the requirement that this be a single, drop-in piece of code, I ended up using this JavaScript block:

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
var loc = window.location.href;
var re = /\/index.asp/i;
if (loc.search(re) != -1) {
    window.location.href = loc.replace (re,"/"); 
}
</script>