posted
When you go to IMdb.com and search for a movie or an actor, the URL of the pages don't have a query string in them, but they do have an identifier.
See how they have the key values for each item in their database as part of the URL, but not as a query string (which would look like http://us.imdb.com/page.htm?name=0000113 or the like).
It appears as though each URL is its own directory (virtual or otherwise), even though it's clearly a single page that's data driven.
What I'm trying to figure out is if there's a way to achieve this in IIS. I imagine IMdb.com uses Apache or something Unix based, and they'd have a lot more leeway with that. With my knowledge of IIS, I can either have it with a query string that shows in the URL or without a query string, but with no identifier in the URL. I'd like to emulate what IMdb.com does.
Does anyone here know how I might be able to pull this off?
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Lisa, the feature you're looking for is URL rewriting (it duplicates mod_rewrite in Apache). There are quite a few ISAPI implementations out there, some of them free, that will accomplish this.
Edit: Here's an overview. I can't speak to any of the specific suggestions, but the concept is well described.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
You can also do it without URL rewriting, by setting up a script to handle everything with a particular prefix, then just having it choose what to do based on the path. Many web frameworks (such as django, ruby on rails, and turbogears) are set up to do pretty URLs without any URL rewriting, and doing it that way is the rule, rather than the exception, with Java web applications. After a little googling, it looks like this is called something like wildcard mapping on IIS, but that rewriting is preferred in most situations because wildcard mapping has some limitations.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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