Control.ResolveUrl versus Control.ResolveClientUrl versus VirtualPathUtility.ToAbsolute

Question

Is there any benifit to using one of these methods over the other when resolving paths which start with the tilde (~)?

Generally, what is a better practice, should you be sending relative paths or absolute paths down in your html?

Answer 1

The difference between ResolveUrl and ResolveClientUrl is that ResolveClientUrl returns a path relative to the current page, ResolveUrl returns a path relative to the site root:

http://www.andornot.com/about/developerblog/2007/06/resolveurl-vs-resolveclienturl.aspx

I would recommend using absolute paths.

Edit: Rick Strahl posted a nice article about this

Edit2: Removed bit about caching. Does not add to the answer and may not necessarily be accurate.

http://west-wind.com/weblog/posts/132081.aspx

Answer 2

Here's another article that explains the difference between the various ways to resolving paths in ASP.NET -

Different approaches for resolving URLs in ASP.NET

Answer 3

What about google analystics doe sit see them differently?

Answer 4

Note that VirtualPathUtility.ToAbsolute(virtualPath) will throw an exception if a query string is included in the path.

The HttpException message will be along the lines of "'~/YourVirtualPath/YourPage.aspx?YourQueryStringArg=FooBar' is not a valid virtual path."

See Rick Strahl's Web Log:ResolveUrl() without Page and MSDN: VirtualPathUtility.ToAbsolute Method (String)