Asp.net-mvc – URL Rewrite and IIS Express: some rules work, some don’t

asp.net-mvciis-expressurl-rewriting

I'm using IIS Express to develop an MVC 3 application which is doing some URL rewriting in web.config. I have ran into a bit of an oddity where some of the rules work perfectly, while others fail.

For example this one works:

<rule name="Remove ETag">
 <match serverVariable="RESPONSE_ETag" pattern=".+" />
 <action type="Rewrite" value="" />
</rule>

(source: https://stackoverflow.com/a/8089525/88709)

This one doesn't (gives Unrecognized attribute 'url' in the second line):

<rule name="Remove trailing slash" stopProcessing="true">
  <match url="(.*)/$" />
  <conditions>
    <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" />
    <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" />
  </conditions>
  <action type="Redirect" redirectType="Permanent" url="{R:1}" />
</rule>

(source: http://blogs.iis.net/ruslany/archive/2009/04/08/10-url-rewriting-tips-and-tricks.aspx)

According to Introducing IIS Express, by ScottGu, IIS Express enables a full web-server feature set – including SSL, URL Rewrite, Media Support, and all other IIS 7.x modules.

I was inclined to believe that maybe the URL Rewrite module that ships with IIS Express is the 1.0 version, not 2.0. So I installed URL Rewrite Module 2.0, but I still get the same error.

Does anybody have a clue why this happens? In case it matters, my setup is Visual Studio 2010 SP1, IIS Express 7.5.1070, ASP.NET MVC 3.

Best Answer

The problem was that I placed the <rule> in the wrong node; 'Remove trailing slash' rule is supposed to go inside <rules></rules>, but I incorrectly placed it in <outboundRules></outboundRules> (which BTW is where the 'Remove ETag' rule goes).

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