Introduction To FriendlyUrls in ASP.Net

Introduction

Today we'll learn the use of FriendlyUrls in the ASP.NET Web Application. Now you can make your URL pretty with the use of a Friendly. If you want your URL to not contain the extension (.aspx), this article is useful for you. You simply change it with the use of Routes.MapPageRoute(). However, managing Routing Tables is a little tedious and most WebForms folks are not accustomed to the concept and don't want to invest the time.

In that context, the new ASP.NET feature, FriendlyUrls, makes URLs prettier. You can simply have it from the NuGet Packages or the Package Manager Console. One more good news is that this feature is included in both ASP.NET 4.5 and ASP.NET 4 frameworks.

So, now let's get started with the following procedure.

Example of FriendlyUrls

In this section, we'll create the application and use the FriendlyUrls in the application to make the URL prettier. Just follow the procedure below.

Step 1. Open Visual Studio and click on "New Project".

Step 2. Select the ASP.NET Web Application and enter the app name as FriendlyUrlWebApp as in the following.

Step 3. Select the WebForms Project Template to create the application.

Visual Studio creates the WebForms application and generates the files and folders that are associated with the project template.

Step 4. Now just right-click on the project and open the Manage NuGet Packages.

Step 5. Search for the friendly URLs and ensure that the "Include Prerelease" is selected.

Step 6. In the Global.asax file, modify your Application_Start() with the following highlighted code.

void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    // Code that runs on application startup
    RouteConfig.RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);
    BundleConfig.RegisterBundles(BundleTable.Bundles);
}

Step 7. Now run the application and see when I open the existing page by entering a URL like: About.aspx, the GET request for the /About.aspx turns into a 301 redirect to the /About.

Creating Sample WebForm

In this section, we'll create the sample WebForm named Hello. Add a new WebForm and add the following code to it.

<form id="form1" runat="server">
    <div>
        Hi this is Friendly URL Demo Web Application.
    </div>
</form>

We can simply import the namespace of FriendlyUrls by adding the following code.

<%@ Import Namespace="Microsoft.AspNet.FriendlyUrls" %>

Application Mobile View

In the project, when you add the NuGet Package, you will also get the Site.Mobile.Master. If we open the project in the iPhone simulator, the default page will open.

We can open the webform in the iPhone simulator.

If we click on the Desktop View in the last, the following screenshot will open.

Suppose we create the content page of the Site.Mobile.Master and add some content then it'll open in the simulator as shown in the following screenshot.

Summary

This article described the use of FriendlyUrls in ASP.NET Web Applications. We can also create the WebForms and mobile WebForms and open them in the simulators. Thanks for reading.