Anders Hattestad
Dec 23, 2009
  10615
(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.

Please login to comment.
Latest blogs
Jhoose Security Module V3.0.0 – Site-Level Security Configuration for Optimizely

Jhoose Security Module updated for Optimizely CMS 13, introducing separate packages for CMS 12 and 13 with ongoing support and enhancements.

Andrew Markham | Apr 6, 2026 |

Searchable settings page

In my current project which has been actively developed for quite some time we have a big classic settings page. Unfortunately the placement and...

Per Nergård (MVP) | Apr 6, 2026

Using Azure Devops Pipelines in Optimizely SAAS (Configured) Commerce

Introduction When working with SAAS Commerce build service v2 your currently need to use a github repo with configured branches to start deployment...

Mark Hall | Apr 4, 2026 |

Forcing Lowercase URLs in Optimizely CMS During Auto-Translation

Learn how to fix uppercase and punctuation issues in Optimizely CMS 12 URL segments caused by LanguageManager auto-translation using a custom...

Stuart | Apr 2, 2026 |