Routing with asp.net web forms application

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 introduced a routing engine to the ASP.NET runtime. The routing engine can decouple the URL in an incoming HTTP request from the physical Web Form that responds to the request, allowing you to build friendly URLs for your Web applications.

Let's start make our web application work with routing, first of all you need to do some changes in your global.asax file, add reference in your application for

// Add reference in your application for DLL
System.Web.Routing

// Add following line to your global.asax file
<%@ Import Namespace="System.Web.Routing" %>

Create a method in your global.asax file (we will write the route here latter)

public void RegisterRoutes(System.Web.Routing.RouteCollection routes)
{
}

Now call this method in your Application_Start method in global.asax file

void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) 
{
    RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);
}

That's it you need to do, now your application can accept URLs like the following

1. http://server/application/CarDetail/1234
2. http://server/application/Report/CityName/2009
3. http://server/application/Expenses?page=5

Now time to add the routing for these urls in your RegisterRoutes method created above

// For 1 URL
routes.MapPageRoute("", "CarDetail/{carid}", "~/CarDetail.aspx")  

// For 2 URL
routes.MapPageRoute("CityReport", "Report/{cityname}/{year}", "~/Report.aspx");  

// if you want to pass the default city
routes.MapPageRoute("CityReport", "Report/{cityname}/{year}", "~/Report.aspx", true
    , new RouteValueDictionary { 
             { "cityname", 'defulatCityName' }
     });   

// if you want to pass the default city and year
routes.MapPageRoute("CityReport", "Report/{cityname}/{year}", "~/Report.aspx", true
    , new RouteValueDictionary { 
             { "cityname", 'defulatCityName' }
            ,{ "year",  Datetime.Now.Year.ToString()}
     });   

// For 3 URL: no need to write anything for query string in routing
routes.MapPageRoute("", "Expenses", "~/Expenses.aspx");  

If you are using IIS 7.5 then you will need to add following lines in your web.config otherwise you will get error, page not found

<system.webServer>
   <modules>
      <remove name="UrlRoutingModule-4.0" />
      <add name="UrlRoutingModule-4.0" 
           type="System.Web.Routing.UrlRoutingModule" preCondition="" />
     ----------
  </modules>
</system.webServer>

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