Configure IIS7 to server static content through ASP.NET Runtime
- by Anton Gogolev
I searched high an low and still cannot find a definite answer.
How do I configure IIS 7.0 or a Web Application in IIS so that ASP.NET Runtime will handle all requests -- including ones to static files like *.js, *.gif, etc?
What I'm trying to do is as follows.
We have kind of SaaSy site, which we can "skin" for every customer. "Skinnig" means developing a custom master page and using a bunch of *.css and other images.
Quite naturally, I'm using VirtualPathProvider, which operates like this:
public override System.Web.Hosting.VirtualFile GetFile(string virtualPath)
{
if(PhysicalFileExists(virtualPath))
{
var virtualFile = base.GetFile(virtualPath);
return virtualFile;
}
if(VirtualFileExists(virtualPath))
{
var brandedVirtualPath = GetBrandedVirtualPath(virtualPath);
var absolutePath = HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath(brandedVirtualPath);
Trace.WriteLine(string.Format("Serving '{0}' from '{1}'",
brandedVirtualPath, absolutePath), "BrandingAwareVirtualPathProvider");
var virtualFile = new VirtualFile(brandedVirtualPath, absolutePath);
return virtualFile;
}
return null;
}
The basic idea is as follows: we have a branding folder inside our webapp, which in turn contains folders for each "brand", with "brand" being equal to host name. That is, requests to http://foo.example.com/ should use static files from branding/foo_example_com, whereas http://bar.example.com/ should use content from branding/bar_example_com.
Now what I want IIS to do is to forward all requests to static files to StaticFileHandler, which would then use this whole "infrastructure" and serve correct files. However, try as I might, I cannot configure IIS to do this.
