Anders Hattestad
Dec 23, 2009
visibility 10809
star star star star star
(0 votes)

QueryRewriteProvider replace query strings with paths

For fun I tried to make a url rewriter that could translate generic query parameters to be part of the path.

So if you had a page /newlist/  and used a query parameter to get to page 2 like this /newslist/?page=2 you would get that parameter as a path like /newslist/page_2/.

The code to replace all links is simple when you base your code on FriendlyUrlRewriteProvider.

From pageRef –> Url

#region from PageRef=>URL
protected override bool ConvertToExternalInternal(UrlBuilder url, object internalObject, System.Text.Encoding toEncoding)
{
    bool status=base.ConvertToExternalInternal(url, internalObject, toEncoding);
    if (status)
    {
        PageReference pageLink = internalObject as PageReference;
        if (pageLink != null)
        {
            List<string> done = new List<string>(); 
            foreach (string key in url.QueryCollection.AllKeys) 
            {
                if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(key) && !string.IsNullOrEmpty(url.QueryCollection[key]))
                {
                    url.Path += key + "_" + url.QueryCollection[key] + "/";
                    done.Add(key);
                }
            }
            foreach (string d in done)
                url.QueryCollection.Remove(d);
           
        }
    }
    return status;
}
#endregion

This code will replace all links create on a page with the path of that page and the extra “path” from the query.

FromUrl=>Page

When  want to translate the extra path to a query parameter I need to do some small changes in ConvertToInternalInternal function. But the changes are unfortantly a bit inside the base function so I needed to copy the whole function. I also needed to make some adjustments to the helper function GetPageFromStartByPath and GetPageBySegments so I could find last know page from path and get the rest of the path so I could add them to the query collection.

protected static PageReference GetPageBySegments(PageReference rootPageRef, string[] segments, string languageCode, out PageReference lastGood, List<string> segmentsRemoved)
{
    lastGood = PageReference.EmptyReference;
    for (int i = 0; (i < segments.Length) && !PageReference.IsNullOrEmpty(rootPageRef); i++)
    {
        rootPageRef = UrlSegment.GetPageBySegment(rootPageRef, segments[i], languageCode, false);
        if (!PageReference.IsNullOrEmpty(rootPageRef))
            lastGood = rootPageRef;
        else
        {
            for (int x = i; x < segments.Length; x++)
                segmentsRemoved.Add(segments[x]);
        }
    }
    return rootPageRef;
}

Inside the ConvertToInternalIntranal I added this code

if (page == null)
{
    PageReference lastGood = PageReference.EmptyReference;
    List<string> segmentsRemoved = new List<string>();
    page = GetPageFromStartByPath(str, languageBranchAndPath,out lastGood, segmentsRemoved);

    if (page == null && !PageReference.IsNullOrEmpty(lastGood) && segmentsRemoved.Count>0)
    {
        page = DataFactory.Instance.GetPage(lastGood, LanguageSelector.Fallback(ContentLanguage.PreferredCulture.Name, true));
        foreach (string segment in segmentsRemoved)
        {

            string[] parts = segment.Split('_');
            queryCollection.Add(parts[0], HttpContext.Current.Server.UrlDecode( segment.Substring(parts[0].Length + 1)));
        }
    }
}

This code basically find the depths page based on the path, and take the rest of the path’s as query parameters. The code don’t use more cpu than the ordinary friendly rewriter.

 

The full code is here

Dec 23, 2009

Comments

Mårten Berg
Mårten Berg Sep 21, 2010 10:33 AM

Works great. Thanks for sharing.

error Please login to comment.
Latest blogs
Serving Heavy Multilingual Content Efficiently with Optimizely SaaS CMS

When building enterprise-grade applications on modern headless stacks, performance is governed by payload efficiency. Optimizely SaaS CMS and...

Vipin Banka | Aug 31, 2026

The Under-Documented Optimizely Caching API I Somehow Missed

I recently discovered some useful, but poorly documented, caching features in Optimizely CMS. Here’s how ReadThrough, ReadStrategy.Wait and master...

Dom Reilly | Aug 31, 2026 |

Beyond [Authorize]: Function-Level Permissions in Optimizely

Why basic role checks fall short and how Permissions to Functions unlock audience-based access control The Problem with Basic Authorization ASP.NET...

Sanjay Kumar | Aug 28, 2026

Insights from upgrading Optimizely CMS 12 to CMS 13

Optimizely CMS 13 has been here a while now, so I wanted to share some insights from a few of the migrations that has been done. The framework and...

Pär Wissmark | Aug 28, 2026 |