Baffled ... can't find files

nanonerd · July 3rd, 2012, 03:47 AM

Hi,

I have to learn how an existing website works from scratch (no documentation). So I downloaded the files from the web server onto my local machine. In the default.master, there are links to aspx pages:

Code:

<div class="mainNav">
                    <ul>
	                    <li><a href="Begin.aspx" id="mfa5"><img alt="Begin Your Order" hover="images/a-main-nav-start.gif" src="images/a-main-nav-start.gif"></a></li>
                        <li><a href="Inspiration.aspx" id="mfa6"><img alt="Inspiration Center" hover="images/a-main-nav-inspiration.gif" src="images/a-main-nav-inspiration.gif"></a></li>                        
                    </ul>
                </div>

The part that baffles me is that I cannot find any of these files (begin.apsx, inspiration.aspx) in the same directory, let alone the entire project.

But on the live website, the links work perfectly. Where in the world are these files? I have no idea what's going on here ???

Imar · July 3rd, 2012, 04:46 AM

Hi there,

Hard to say exactly without knowing more about the setup and project type, but could it be due to some rewriting rules either at the site or at the IIS level? Maybe Begin.aspx is the "user friendly" name and is rewritten to another page?

Imar

nanonerd · July 3rd, 2012, 05:04 AM

Hi Imar,

rewriting is new to me, I will look it up ...

QUESTION: even if "rewriting is used", would the begin.aspx file still need to be on the web server? 'cause I don't see it at all ...

BTW, there is a Rewrite section in web.config:

Code:

 <rewrite>
      <rules>
        <rule name="about-us" patternSyntax="ExactMatch" stopProcessing="true">
          <match url="about-us"/>
          <action type="Redirect" url="http://www.aaa.com/About-Us.aspx"/>
        </rule>
      <rules>
<rewrite>

There's actually a bunch of them listed, I just copied one to show example. However, none seem to have anything to do with the links/aspx files in OP.

Imar · July 3rd, 2012, 05:16 AM

Quote:

even if "rewriting is used", would the begin.aspx file still need to be on the web server

Nope; the idea of rewriting is that you can have URLs that don't exist and map them to existing files. This allows you to do stuff like:

www.volvo.com/v70
www.volvo.com/v60

while under the hood they may be rewritten to:

www.volvo.com/Cars/Details.aspx?Id=123
www.volvo.com/Cars/Details.aspx?Id=456

The patterns allow wild card and reg ex mappings. Maybe there's a generic rule that maps the incoming request to a generic page that in turn looks at the requested URL and (just an example) serves content from the database?

Cheers,

Imar