URL Rewriting (making user Friendly URLs)

The Problem:

At number of occasions we need a user friendly URL instead of a messy URL having the query string variables.

Like we may be having

URL A: http://www.mywebpage.com/product.aspx?id=123476576

and we want to have a URL for above as

URL B: http://www.mywebpage.com/product_123476576.aspx

Obviously from above two the 2nd one is more user friendly and easily readable. Now the question is how to accomplish this task. Okay solution is not at all a complex solution. In following I will be explaining the solution in detail

The Solution

Though there are more than one ways for this task but I will make use of the method "application_beginrequest" of "Global.asax". This method is called every time some request is made to the website.

Following will be the code to convert URL A into URL B. You can modify this code as per your need.

VB


  Public Sub application_beginrequest(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)
        Try
            Dim initialurl As String = Request.Url.ToString
            If initialurl.ToLower.IndexOf("product_") >= 0 Then
                Dim mTemp As String = initialurl.Substring(initialurl.LastIndexOf("_") + 1)
                Dim mProductID As Integer = mTemp.Substring(0, mTemp.LastIndexOf(".aspx"))
                Dim mOriginalURL As String = "product.aspx?id=" + mProductID
                Context.RewritePath(mOriginalURL)
            End If
            'Code to Log your Error
        Catch ex As Exception
        End Try
    End Sub

CSharp (C#)


public void application_beginrequest(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        try
        {
            string initialurl = Request.Url.ToString();
            if (initialurl.ToLower().IndexOf("product_") >= 0)
            {
                string mTemp = initialurl.Substring(initialurl.LastIndexOf("_") + 1);
                int mProductID = Convert.ToInt32(mTemp.Substring(0, mTemp.LastIndexOf(".aspx")));
                string mOriginalURL = "product.aspx?id=" + mProductID;
                Context.RewritePath(mOriginalURL);
            }
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            //Code to Log your Error
        }
    }