MVC3 URL Encoding Issue with Slash (/) %2f - Passing a slash in query string with MVC Routing

Question

I have the following routing path defined in global.asax to handle two parameters in the url:

routes.MapRoute(
 "Default", // Route name
 "{page}/{th}", // URL with parameters
 new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", page = UrlParameter.Optional, th = UrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults
 );

The first parameter is a URL of another website, i.e. www.othersite.com/about/.

Even if I encode the slashes to %2f it fails to route the URL correctly. I want to use something like this:

http://{mywebsite}/www.othersite.net%2fabout%2f/{parameter2}

I do not want to use Base64 encoding as I want the URL to be readable as above.

I'm using MVC 3.

Thanks

Answer 1

Take a look at the following blog post from Scott Hanselman where he explains some possible workarounds. But the conclusion is:

After ALL this effort to get crazy stuff in the Request Path, it's worth mentioning that simply keeping the values as a part of the Query String (remember WAY back at the beginning of this post?) is easier, cleaner, more flexible, and more secure.

So basically it would be better to use an url encoded query string parameter for this instead of trying to fight against IIS in a battle that you will probably lose.