ASP.NET MVC returns wrong path for Url.Content

Question

I have an ASP.NET MVC app which runs fine under the debugger running from http://localhost:9002/ But when I publish it to http://localhost/Zot/ the calls to Url.Content are returning incorrect values.

I have script tags like

<script src="<%= Url.Content("~/Scripts/util.js") %>" ...

In the published site this produces:

<script src="Zot/Scripts/util.js" ...

Instead of

<script src="/Zot/Scripts/util.js" ...

or

<script src="Scripts/util.js" ...

I have stylesheet tags like:

<link href="~/Content/Site.css" runat="server" ...

That produce the right thing:

<link href="Content/Site.css" ...

Any suggestions on why Url.Content is failing. I clearly can't put a runat="server" on the <script> tags.

Answer 1

I tend to use Rob Conery's Script Registration helper:

public static string RegisterJS(this System.Web.Mvc.HtmlHelper helper, string scriptLib) {
  //get the directory where the scripts are
  string scriptRoot = VirtualPathUtility.ToAbsolute("~/Scripts");
  string scriptFormat="<script src=\"{0}/{1}\" type=\"text/javascript\"></script>\r\n";
  return string.Format(scriptFormat,scriptRoot,scriptLib);
}

Usage:

<%= Html.RegisterJS("myscriptFile.js") %>

As you can see in the example, this uses VirtualPathUtility to resolve the url of the Scripts directory. This should also help to bypass the problem of tag soup.

Answer 2

This should have been fixed in RC2. If you are using RC2 and are still seeing this problem, please file a bug at http://forums.asp.net/1146.aspx.