How to hide Extension of Page in URL ?

savan_thakkar · February 18th, 2006, 07:23 AM

Hi,
How can we hide extension of a page in URL?
I saw this in Yahoo.com....I don't know that is it the name of page or
they have used Server.Transfer ?
Using server.transfer I don't think extension of the page can be mad invisible..It may be possible that even page name is not being displayed..It shows just folder name....
Can anyone explain how to do this??

Savan

adam_kahtava · February 18th, 2006, 09:01 PM

Could you give an example of what you saw on Yahoo?

- A.Kahtava

savan_thakkar · February 20th, 2006, 08:19 AM

There are a lot of links on Yahoo like Movies,Music,News,My yahoo,Spotrs,Travel,TV ....etc.
When u drag your mouse over these links,in browser the link is displayed.
Now when u click on any link on www.yahoo.com...& see the URL of the new page.
U can not see extension of the page like .aspx or .asp or .php...
For example,
http://mail.yahoo.com/?.intl=us
http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/tor...ia-dopingraids
How this can be done??

Savan

g_vamsi_krish · February 21st, 2006, 12:27 AM

These are not hyperlinks. check them carefully.

vamsi

savan_thakkar · February 21st, 2006, 11:27 AM

I think all those are hyperlinks.
How can u say that they r not Hyperlinks?
Pls tell me briefly...& If not how is it possible to make such links & URLs without extension of page?

Savan

Imar · February 21st, 2006, 12:54 PM

No hyperlinks?? I don't get that either.

Anyway, this is probably done by what is generally referred to as a "default document".

A web server (IIS, Apache and so on) can be configured to support one or more default documents.

When a browser requests a folder / page without a filename and extension, the web server sends back a list of supported default documents. The browser picks one and rerequests the page.

So, on an IIS web site with .NET configured, the default document is Default.aspx. You can access folders that contain that file by simply browsing to the folder name.

Let's say you have an app located at http://localhost/SomeFolder

On disk, the SomeFolder (at c:\inetpub\wwwroot\SomeFolder) contains a file called Default.aspx. When you browse http://localhost/SomeFolder, you actually get the file Default.aspx.
So there is no difference between

http://localhost/SomeFolder

and

http://localhost/SomeFolder/Default.aspx

You can configure the web server to support other default documents as well.

In addition to default documents, the same feature can also be accomplished with URL rewriting, a bit more advanced subject...

Does this clarify things?

Imar
---------------------------------------
Imar Spaanjaars
Everyone is unique, except for me.

adam_kahtava · February 22nd, 2006, 01:27 AM

As Imar said; this is done through a process called URL Re-writing or URL Mapping and the use of Default documents...

URL Re-writing allows you to map a URL (http://localhost/SomeFolder/HomePage/) to a document (http://localhost/SomeFolder/Default.aspx?page=HomePage).

URL Re-writing is supported on most web servers at the ISAPI layer; however you can Re-write URLâs at the ASP.NET layer, through the HTTP modules or HTTP handlers.

Here are some linksâ¦
  URL Re-writing for:
    ASP.NET v2.0: http://www.urlrewriting.net/en/
    ASP.NET v1: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...lrewriting.asp

URL Re-writing became popular through Apache's mod_rewrite module and has since then been introduced to IIS and ASP.NET.

On a side note, Iâve been experimenting with Ruby (a popular programming language here in Japan) on Rails (a web development framework). Ruby on Rails builds it's modules / components around these friendly URLs. Rails is pretty interesting and will have it's place on the net; however it certainly doesn't measure up to ASP.NET.
If you see an .rhtml extension on the web there is a good chance youâre looking at a website designed with Ruby on Railsâ¦

- A.Kahtava

savan_thakkar · February 23rd, 2006, 01:12 AM

Hi Friends,
Thanks a lot for your Support.
I got it.But there is one more issue.
If there are two pages in one folder & suppose both are configured to be Default page in IIS.Then the first page configured in IIS is executed.
Now referring to Yahoo.com,
Can u tell me How is the Folder structure of it??
I think there are multiple folders & links on home page redirects to a page in a folder,because having multiple default pages in one folder is not possible if I m correct.
Please Comment on this.
Thanks

Savan

adam_kahtava · February 23rd, 2006, 01:54 AM

Yes; only one default page can be set, and only one default page will be executed when calling the page through a directory (example: http://localhost/).

You can have your default.aspx (or whatever file you have set as default) load itâs content based on query strings.
For example: http://localhost/?page=hello and http://localhost/?page=world could be accessing the same default file, but both query strings could load different content.

Now; referring to www.yahoo.com.
I couldn't tell you what their directory structure looks like, but I would guess that www.yahoo.com is serving you content through a combination of query strings and URL Re-Writes.
Yahoo wants you to think there are multiple folders involved when displaying their content, but in reality there may be one large query string and a single directory.
Yahoo wants to present a faÃ§ade to you, they want you to perceive that their site as a series of directories because it makes it easier for us to understand (increases usability).

- A.Kahtava

savan_thakkar · February 24th, 2006, 10:31 AM

Thanks Adam.
Your information proved to be very useful for me.
Thanks a lot for Help.
You mentioned Ruby on Rails.I heard a lot about this.But I want some more info regarding Ruby on rails. If you have some more information or simple application in Ruby on rails, can you please mail me on [email protected].

Thanks

Savan