Fountain PenFor simple ASP.NET applications that do not employ URL Rewriting, stepping through the code that handles a request is fairly straightforward. For example, given a request for http://localhost/MyProject/Page.aspx, simply open up Page.aspx and look at the code-behind file to see what code handles this request.

But for applications such as Subtext that support dynamic URLs, it can be a bit daunting to find the code that finally responds to the request.

Common approach to URL Rewriting

Most applications that employ dynamic URLs employ a tactic called “URL Rewriting” The approach these applications typically take is some variant of this approach outlined by Scott Mitchell.

In this approach, a handler maps incoming requests for a dynamic URL to the actual ASP.NET page that handles the request. As an example,

http://localhost/CategoryName.aspx

Might be rewritten to:

http://localhost/Category.aspx?Cat=CategoryName

The .TEXT and Subtext approach {.clear}

Subtext employs a slightly different technique that it inherits from .TEXT which Scott Watermasysk wrote about a while ago. Instead of mapping incoming urls to different pages via a configuration section within web.config, it pretty much maps every request to a single page called DTP.aspx, a barebone template file.

Cracking open Subtext’s (or .TEXT’s) web.config file, you can see a section named HandlerConfiguration. It has an attribute defaultPageLocation with the value DTP.aspx.

Within that section are a set of HttpHandler nodes each with a regular expression pattern. When a request comes in, the handler with the pattern that matches the URL is invoked. Subtext adds the set of controls defined in the controls attribute of that handler and then returns a compiled instance of DTP.aspx via a call to PageParser.GetCompiledPageInstance.

Future Direction

For future versions of Subtext, we may consider changing to a model more in line with what Scott Mitchell wrote about above for a couple of reasons. The first is that the current model is not really supported.

According to the MSDN documentation on the GetCompiledPageInstance method

This method supports the .NET Framework infrastructure and is not intended to be used directly from your code.

The second reason is that it is a lot more difficult for people to understand this method. We may gain a level of simplicity via the other approach without losing much in flexibility. This decision will be made when we have enough time to evaluate the differences and tradeoffs between the two methods.

Full Request Lifecycle in Subtext

If you are interested in a more detailed discussion of how Subtext handles incoming requests, please check out the recently added documentation on this subject, An In-Depth Look At The Life of a Subtext Request.