Fixing shortcomings in urlRewriter.net

One of my current projects, allows for the customer to create their own pages on the fly. As such, I needed to create a URL Rewriter so that they could create Search Engine friendly URLs. During my hunt I came across URL Rewriter .NET, an open source solution.

The initial problem that I ran into is, that it disables handling of the default page handlers. After following their suggestions and adding the following expression to handle default pages, I realized it didn't handle subdirectories very smoothly.

<rewrite url="^(.*)/(\?.+)?$" to="$1/default.aspx$2" processing="stop">

Basically, http://www.paulnkaty.com/test/ would resolve fine. http://www.paulnkaty.com/test would return a 404 not found error. For now, until I get a chance to look through the source code and find the cause of the problem, I thought I would give you a work around.

<redirect url="(.*)/test$" to="$1/test/" processing="stop">

For this, it looks for the URL to end in the directory name, without a trailing slash. If it matches this case, it redirects the URL to the same location with a trailing slash. Luckily the application uses Regular Expression (RegEx) to parse the URL. Admittedly, this is a weak point for me, so it'll take some time before I can really find a nice solution for this project.

Overall, it's not a terrible solution, but I will probably look down the road at some better ideas. One limitation I do have, is that our primary web server is still on IIS 5.

URLRewriting in the land of Global.asax

Earlier I wrote about using URLRewriter.net. It's a decent piece of software, but has some serious drawbacks, especially since it forces you to modify the IIS configuration for a specific website. As a webmaster, trying to keep that straight on 1500+ websites isn't exactly an ideal solution. So today, I'm going to present you with a fairly basic method in this case of handling it in the global.asax file. This method is handled inside the Application_BeginRequest Subroutine.

Dim incoming As HttpContext = HttpContext.Current
Dim oldpath As String = incoming.Request.Path.ToLower()
Dim pageid As String
Dim DynamicPageName As String
Dim BareName As String
Dim regex As System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex
Dim matches As MatchCollection
'------------------------------------------------
' URL rewriter for WebPage.aspx?pageid=xxx
'------------------------------------------------
' set unique page name for dynamic pages in web.config
DynamicPageName = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings("cfgWebPageName")
' get the bare name for moving pageid in the string
BareName = RemoveFileExtension(DynamicPageName)

Here is the RemoveFileExtension function. We can't use the Path.GetFilenamewithoutExtension function because of the potential case for a QueryString at the end of a dynamic page:

Function RemoveFileExtension(ByVal parmFileName as String) as String
   Dim FullLength as Integer = parmFileName.Length
   Dim RightStringToCut as String = parmFileName.Substring(parmFileName.LastIndexOf("."))
   Dim RightLength as Integer = RightStringToCut.Length
   Dim NewStringLength as Integer = FullLength - RightLength
   Dim NewWebPageName as String = parmFileName.Substring(0, NewStringLength)
   Return NewWebPageName
End Function

Now onto the rest of our application...

regex = new System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex(BareName & "(\d+).aspx", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase Or RegexOptions.IgnorePatternWhitespace)
matches = regex.Matches(oldpath)
If matches.Count > 0 Then
   pageid = matches(0).Groups(1).ToString()
   incoming.RewritePath(DynamicPageName & "?pageid=" + pageid)
Else
   incoming.RewritePath(oldpath)
End If

In the above code, it is specifically looking for a page named "webpageNN.aspx" where NN is equal to the page ID. So the page would be labeled as webpage18.aspx. It then rewrites the URL to webpage.aspx?pageid=18. The user, searchengines, etc. still see webpage18.aspx though. Easily enough, this could be expanded to be used with more friendly URLs, such as mywedding.aspx which would rewrite to webpage.aspx?pageid=18 via the addition of database information.

Adding a 3rd party form in Active Admissions

Recently, I was asked by another college how we successfully implemented forms that we want to submit to third parties, such as our Library system's search network, our Google search, etc. So today, I'm going to cover how that is done. This trick is fairly simple, and best implemented within XSLT.

First you'll create your XSLT document with the following shell...

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:ACControl="urn:This:Control" xmlns:ACXslt="urn:ActiveCampus:XSLTLibrary" exclude-result-prefixes="ACControl ACXslt">
<xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes" omit-xml-declaration="yes"/>
<xsl:template match="/">
<!--- Put your Form Here -->
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

As you can see in the middle, I've highlighted where your form code will eventually go.

Now we'll start creating your form. In this example case, we are going to use a simple Google Search. Below is the Textbox for the search.

<input type="text" name="q" />

This is fairly straight forward... now comes the real fun, the Submit Button.

<input type="submit" name="b1" value="Go" onclick="javascript:WebForm_DoPostBackWithOptions(new WebForm_PostBackOptions(&quot;b1&quot;, &quot;&quot;, false, &quot;&quot;, &quot;http://www.google.com/search&quot;, false, false))" id="b1" />

Hopefully while looking at this you'll notice that instead of actually putting up a quote, in the XSLT, I am actually putting in encoded quotes. This is very important otherwise it won't work.

While I'm on the subject... this would be much more straight forward if Datatel enabled the ability to insert Javascript directly into their Rich Text Editor. Unfortunately they turn that capability off, and the only way to get it switched is via a programmer switch. So I encourage all Active Admissions users to contact Datatel and submit a request to get it turned on. Part of the reason for this is, that I believe schools should have the capability to use all technology, and not be limited. Give us the freedom to create!

Feel free to post, or contact me if you have any questions on this process.

Cya,
Paul

Install notes for installing ActiveCampus CMS/ActiveAdmissions

Well I got a new toy a couple of weeks ago. My very own development server for making changes to ActiveCampus/ActiveAdmissions without the fear of blowing up our live website. Below are some key notes that will probably help you on your way to installing this software. If you're like us, Datatel came in and did the initial installation. So I never had any experience doing it myself. Kinda scary if we ever had a blow up that required a new installation... So below are some notes that I made.

1. Create the Database and user ahead of time. Initially give the new user global powers, and after you are finished installing, backdown the permissions to the appropriate level.

2. Most importantly. Nowhere in their requirements or documentation does it talk about this... but if you don't install it, the software will never work. You must download and install Microsoft's Web Services Enhancements (WSE) 2.0 AND 3.0 for Microsoft .NET. It took me a good 2 or 3 hours to track down the solution. So hopefully this saves somebody that amount of time.

Outside of that the install went fairly smoothly. It requires quite a bit of hands on work, because their installer is not setup to configure the log directories or modify folder permissions. But after you that up and running, things should smooth out for you.

So now that I have my test install up and running... hopefully I'll be posting more tricks and tips from working on my development environment.

For those keeping track at home.. my test server is a Dell Poweredge with Dual Quad-Core processors, 12GB of memory, and 2 Raid-1 Drives. Way overkill for a dev server, but I'm happy. :)

Permanent Redirects in ActiveCampus CMS

I recently received a request on how to handle Permanent Redirects (301 Redirects) in Datatel's Active Campus... So without further ado, here is my solution to that problem.

First thing I did was create a new Template, in my case titled Template404.aspx. Be sure to include any .NET Controls specific to your implementation...

<%@ OutputCache NoStore="true" Duration="1" VaryByParam="none" %>
<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" Inherits="ActiveCampus.Websites.Controls.CMSPage" StyleSheets="/Website Resources/css/SiteStyle.css:all|/Website Resources/css/SiteStylePrint.css:print" Async="true" %>
<%@ Register Src="/Templates/controls/404control.ascx" tagName="control404" TagPrefix="control404" %>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
<head id="Head1" runat="server">
    <title>Central Wyoming College - Page Not Found Error</title>
    <script language="javascript" src="/Media/Website%20Resources/scripts/mootools.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
    <script language="javascript" src="/Media/Website%20Resources/scripts/AC-Core.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
    <script language="javascript" src="/Media/Website%20Resources/scripts/AC-LightBox.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />
<!--[if lte IE 6]>
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/Media/Website%20Resources/css/SiteStyleIE6.css" />
    <![endif]-->
<link rel="icon" type="image/vnd.microsoft.icon" href="/Media/Website Resources/Favicon.ico" />
</head>
<body id="body" runat="server">
<div id="pageCt" class="search">
    <form id="form1" action="/" runat="server">
        <div id="pageCtInner">
            <div id="pageCtBG">
                <div id="zoneCt">
                    <div id="gridCt">                                            
                        <div id="zone2">
                            <div id="centerContent">
                                <control404:control404 id="control404" runat="server" />
                            </div>
                        </div>
                        <div id="zone1">
                
                        </div>
                        <div class="spacer"> </div>    
                    </div>
                    <div class="spacer"> </div>
                </div>
                <div class="spacer"> </div>
            </div>
            <div class="spacer"> </div>
            <div class="spacer"> </div>
        </div>
        <div class="spacer"> </div>
    </form>
    </div>
</body>
</html>

Next, I needed to create the .NET control that actually handles all of my redirects. Now mind, you my method is to have all redirects in a central location. This is also useful for those short hand URL's that you want to go somewhere deep into the site. Like perhaps, www.cwc.edu/library will actually take you to www.cwc.edu/resources/library. This way our library, has a short link they can advertise on their materials. Also, much easier for users to remember the shorter version, then trying to remember to add in resources. So for my example, I'm going to handle some Library Page redirections we used. To add additional, pages, you simply add additional case statements. Additionally, the last part of this script, also takes care of the case when somebody enters cwc.edu (I then want to push them automatically to the www.).

<%@ Language=VBScript %>

<%
' Permanent redirection
Dim str = Request.RawUrl.Replace("/404error.aspx?404;http://www.cwc.edu:80","")
str = str.Replace("/404error.aspx?404;http://cwc.edu:80","")
str = str.tolower
If Request.QueryString("aspxerrorpath") <> String.Empty Then
   str = Request.QueryString("aspxerrorpath").tolower
End If
'Handle Academic Program URLs
If str.indexOf("/academics/programs-of-study/") >=0 or str.indexOf("/Academics/Programs-of-Study/") >=0 Then
      Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently"
      Response.AddHeader ("Location", "http://www.cwc.edu/academics/programs/")
else
Select Case str.tolower
   Case "/resouces/library/testingcenter/testcenterrec.aspx"
      Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently"
      Response.AddHeader("Location","http://www.cwc.edu/resources/Library/testingcenter/testcenterrec.html")
   Case "/resources/library/testingcenter/fees.aspx"
      Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently"
      Response.AddHeader("Location","http://www.cwc.edu/resources/Library/testingcenter/Fees.htm")
   Case "/resources/library/testingcenter/clep.aspx"
      Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently"
      Response.AddHeader("Location","http://www.cwc.edu/resources/Library/testingcenter/Clep.htm")
   Case "/resources/library/testingcenter/default.aspx"
      Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently"
      Response.AddHeader("Location","http://www.cwc.edu/resources/Library/testingcenter/default.htm")
   Case "/resources/library/librarydistance.aspx"
      Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently"
      Response.AddHeader("Location","http://www.cwc.edu/resources/Library/librarydistance.htm")



   Case Else
      Response.write ("<p>Oops... This page can't be found. Please visit the <a href='http://www.cwc.edu/azindex.aspx'>Site Map</a> for a listing of pages.<br />Error Page: " & str & "<br />Also try search at the top of the website to find the page you are looking for.")
Dim strRootURL = Request.URL.ToString.Replace("http://cwc.edu/Cache/Templates/Template404.aspx?=404;","")
'Response.write("<p>URL: " & strRootURL)
if strRootURL.startswith("http://cwc.edu") Then
strRootURL = strRootURL.Replace("http://cwc.edu","http://www.cwc.edu")
Response.Redirect(strRootURL)
End If
End Select
End If
Response.End
%>

Next you'll add this template to the Website Workflow. You do that by going to Website, Right clicking the top "Website" folder and selecting Workflow Properties. Click the Template Groups Tab then select your template bundle. Now click the Templates tab in the bottom section. Goto the bottom, and click the add button to add your template. Click Ok, and exit the workflow.

Now you should be able to create a page with this template. It is not necessary to enter the template designer. Just make sure the page is published. Make sure the page loads up in your browser by pointing directly to it.

This next part, will cause a short pause and delay, so I recommend that you do it during non-peak hours. Also, create a backup of your web.config file before making any changes.

On the public website instance, open the web.config file. And search for <customerrors. Assuming you have not modified it at all, you can change it to:

<customErrors mode="On" defaultRedirect="ErrorPages/ErrorPage.aspx" />

Modify the defaultRedirect location to be the location of your error. In our case, we want users to always just think it is a page not found error, even if there is a programming error in a form. But you can also modify it to handle just 404 error types.

That should do it.

Hopefully this helps you out down the road!

Paul

Custom Programming in ActiveCampus

So, your school uses ActiveCampus? Perhaps your school needs to list a staff directory and you want to be able to have it updated automagically instead of hand updating a content type for each user as they come and go with their employment. Well I'm hear to say that it appears to be fairly straight forward process. You can even embed the component into the CMS and your templates. Unfortunately, I haven't found a way to make it so that you can drop your custom program into a dropzone. Perhaps I'll get that figured out as well? I don't know if it's possible, but Test servers are meant to be borked and re-imaged right?!

ActiveCampus is developed in ASP.NET, so therefore, I created my app in ASP.NET as well. For my personal preference I am using C#. I created a new Web Application in Visual Studio. For my first run through, I created a test control that is basically Hello World. I created my control, and compiled the code to create an ASP.NET Assembly. I then copied the assembly into the bin directory of both the console and the public site. For my instance, I named my assembly myschool_CustomProgramming.dll.

Next up copied the code on the ASCX control into a new template under Website->Templates. I put it in a new folder called customControls. I then edited a Template to reference and use this control.

The result is that i get a functioning template that I can still add items to the drop zone in, and yet still have the capability to have my custom programming. I created a page using this template, and the result was a functioning page that uses both the ActiveCampus processes and my own assembly as well.

On a side note, I highly suggest that you put all of your custom programming into a safe and unique class structure to ensure that you cannot interfere with their programming. In my case, I just used myschool_CustomProgramming.

Right now, I'm working on building our Staff Directory and online email form so that it is embedded directly into our site.

Please note that most likely anytime you upgrade the system, you will probably need to re-add your custom components. I will be testing that in the near future when I update our test environment to the latest version from Datatel. In any case, this method allows your code to run independently of their programming. If you wished, you may be able to bring in their components and link to some of their classes, but I haven't gone down that road yet. (Might be useful for database connectivity). In the meantime, I'm just using my own custom components for accessing the database, using the same connection methodology that they have setup.

So far this is just a proof of concept. Hopefully by mid-June I'll have something in production to show everyone.

Paul

Using mod rewrite in Apache

In a previous post I discussed URL rewriting in .NET. I was recently asked for advice on rewriting URLs in an Apache environment. So below is my answer to that question.

In the .htaccess file we do the following:

RewriteEngine On
#if query sting exists, then append to var2

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^myschool\.edu$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.myschool.edu/$1
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^(.*)
RewriteRule ^(.*)((.(htm|php))|\/)$ pages.php?var1=$1&%1 [L] RewriteRule ^$ home.htm [L]
[R=301,L]

(Entries preceded by # are commented lines of code.)

The first line, RewriteCond is checking to see if the URL is http://myschool.edu/<restofdomain>. In that case we change it to http://www.myschool.edu/<rest of domain>. The R states that this is a forced redirection (thus is updates the URL's browser to display www.myschool.edu instead of just myschool.edu. 301 is the code, meaning permanent redirection. L means last command, stop executing. (When this occurs, it will restart the Rewrite condition upon load.)

The next rewriteCond command is to ensure any pre-existing Query Strings are passed on.

The next Rewrite rule, checks to see if the page includes a .htm, .php, or a forward slash (/).

If so we rewrite the URL as described. The [L] signifies that last command.

Lastly, if it's not that, then that means it's just www.myschool.edu in which case we modify it to be www.myschool.edu/home.htm

Basically we are rewriting the URL behind the scenes to the appropriate page. Here is an example

http://www.myschool.edu/Current-Students.htm is rewritten to http://www.myschool.edu/pages.php?var1=Current-Students

From there, our pages.php code retrieves the appropriate page from our CMS (home-grown in our case) and builds the page based on its settings. (Currently our pages are always built dynamically instead of dynamically.)

However, in the browser it still appears as the original URL.

For more information on mod_rewrite click here.