URL rewriting with UrlRewritingNet fails with a + char in the URL
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26-09-2019 - |
Question
I'm using UrlRewritingNet in Umbraco to do some basic URL rewriting of product and category URLs. Everything is fine on my local machine (Visual Studio dev-webserver) and on our internal development server (Window Server 2008 with ISS 7, 32 bit). But it fails on the production server, which is Window Server 2008 R2 with IIS 7 (64 bit). The symptom is that the rewrite rule is not triggered. The server simply gives me an 404 error.
The rewriting rule looks like this:
<add name="CategoryRewrite"
virtualUrl="^/products/(.*)/(.*).aspx"
rewriteUrlParameter="ExcludeFromClientQueryString"
destinationUrl="~/default.aspx?umbPage=1&maincategory=$1&subcategory=$2"
ignoreCase="true"/>
The URL looks like the following - this doesn't work:
http://example.net/products/category+name/sub+category.aspx
If I change the URL to the following it works in all 3 environments:
http://example.net/products/category%20name/sub%20category.aspx
It is clear that the regex in the virtualUrl attribute fails when the + is used for the space character. But I must admit, that I can figure out why the regex fails only on the Windows 2008 R2 server.
I'm looking for insights on what differences between the Windows Server 2008 R2 and the other 2 environments. What should I look for?
I have confirmed that the System.Web.RegularExpressions.dll is the same version on the servers.
Solution
The problem is that the IIS7 request filter rejects URLs containing + characters. The solution is add the following to you Web.config:
<configuration>
<system.webServer>
<security>
<requestFiltering allowDoubleEscaping="true" />
</security>
</system.webServer>
</configuration>
For further details: http://blogs.iis.net/thomad/archive/2007/12/17/iis7-rejecting-urls-containing.aspx
A coworker got the bright idea to run the website on his own IIS. And then the error was further defined as a 404.11, and from there on a solution was simple.
OTHER TIPS
That seems strange to me because your regex matches also '+' characters. Maybe the problem is because of the first character in the regex, beginning of string '^' that you are using. Maybe on the production server you get an absolute URL and on your dev environment server a relative URL passed into the rewriting module.