Simple robots.txt built with asp.net mvc

The other day there was a question about serving static files from episerver, like a robots.txt. Since most editor like to be able to update the robots.txt them self many of us has build solutions for that. There are also some packages in the nuget feed from EPiServer that will help you do just that.

But if you are like me, I do not like to have pre-compiled solutions from other companies in my project, some are better then others but still I like to be able to change most of my code in a project. Of course you can download the source code in many of those packages but some times they tend to do a bit more then you might expected as well.

In this case I just would like to serve a robots.txt if it is requested by a search engine for instance.

Solution

First I create the robots.txt controller. Since we are working with EPiServer CMS I have added a textarea on the startpage type and therefore editors are able to change the content of the file.

   1:      public class RobotsTxtController : Controller

   2:      {

   3:          private Injected<IContentLoader> ContentLoader { get; set; }

   4:   

   5:          [ContentOutputCache]

   6:          public ActionResult Index()

   7:          {

   8:              var startPage = ContentLoader.Service.Get<StartPage>(ContentReference.StartPage);

   9:   

  10:              string content = startPage.RobotsTxtContent;

  11:              return Content(content, "text/plain");

  12:          }

  13:      }

Nesx step is to create an initialization module were we map a route to our robots.txt file.

   1:      [InitializableModule]

   2:      [ModuleDependency(typeof(EPiServer.Web.InitializationModule))]

   3:      public class RenderingInitialization : IInitializableModule

   4:      {

   5:          public void Initialize(InitializationEngine context)

   6:          {

   7:       

   8:              //Maps route for robots.txt

   9:              RouteTable.Routes.MapRoute("RobotsTxtRoute", "robots.txt", new { controller = "RobotsTxt", action = "Index" });

  10:          }

  11:   

  12:   

  13:          public void Preload(string[] parameters) { }

  14:   

  15:          public void Uninitialize(InitializationEngine context)

  16:          {

  17:              //Add uninitialization logic

  18:   

  19:          }

  20:      }

And finally we add the property to our startpage model

        [UIHint(UIHint.Textarea)]
        [Display(Name = "Robots.txt", Order = 90, GroupName = Global.GroupNames.SiteSettings)]
        public virtual string RobotsTxtContent { get; set; }