Remove a segment from the URL in CMS 12

Problem: I have created thousands of pages dynamically using schedule jobs with different templates (e.g. one column, two columns, etc..) and stored them under one of the specific container page templates but some of the page’s URLs were renamed.

So, I have two problems:

1. How to ignore the container page name segment from the URL,
2. Redirect to the new page without using any Add-ons or mapping the old one to the new URL.

Solution: To fix the above problem we need to add the simple address for new URLs in each page and implement custom 301 redirections.

Register middleware into startup.cs file to bypass the container page segment from the URL

 public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IWebHostEnvironment env, IConfiguration configuration)
 {
      app.UseMiddleware<SkipContainerPageMiddleware>();
 }

Create the container page middleware to read the simple address and apply 301 redirection:

public class SkipContainerPageMiddleware
{
    private readonly RequestDelegate _next;
    private readonly ISettingsService _settingsService;
    private readonly IContentLoader _contentLoader;

    public SkipContainerPageMiddleware(RequestDelegate next, ISettingsService settingsService, IContentLoader contentLoader)
    {
        _next = next;
        _settingsService = settingsService;
        _contentLoader = contentLoader;
    }

    public async Task Invoke(HttpContext context)
    {
       //Create a content reference type property in GlobalPageSettings or HomePage to read the container page location where all pages created
        var folderLocation = _settingsService.GetSiteSettings<GlobalPageSettings>()?.OEmbedFolderLocation ?? ContentReference.EmptyReference; 
        var folderName = "/" + _contentLoader.Get<IContent>(folderLocation).Name;

        if (context.Request.Path.StartsWithSegments(folderName, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
        {
            context.Request.Path = context.Request.Path.HasValue
                ? context?.Request?.Path.Value.Substring(folderName.Length)
                : string.Empty;

            if (context != null)
            {
                var url = GetSimpleAddress(folderName, context);
                if (url != null)
                {
                    var newURl = $"{context.Request.Scheme}://{context.Request.Host}/{url.Trim('/')}";
                    context.Response.Redirect(newURl, true);
                    return;
                }
            }
        }

        if (context != null)
            await _next(context);
    }

    private string? GetSimpleAddress(string parentSegment, HttpContext context)
    {
        var parentPage = _contentLoader
            .GetChildren<ContainerPage>(ContentReference.StartPage)
            .FirstOrDefault(x => string.Equals(parentSegment.Trim('/'), x.URLSegment, StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase))?
            .ContentLink
            ?? ContentReference.EmptyReference;

        var url = context.Request.Path.HasValue ? context?.Request.Path.Value.Trim('/') : string.Empty;
        if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(url) || parentPage == ContentReference.EmptyReference)
            return default;

        PageData? page = null;
        foreach (var item in url.Split('/'))
        {
            page = RecursivePageBySegment(parentPage, item);
            if (page != null)
                parentPage = page.ContentLink;
        }

        return page?.ExternalURL ?? url;
    }

    private PageData? RecursivePageBySegment(ContentReference parentPage, string urlSegment)
    {
        var children = _contentLoader.GetChildren<PageData>(parentPage);
        if (children.Count() == 0)
        {
            return _contentLoader.Get<PageData>(parentPage);
        }

        var page = children.FirstOrDefault(page => page.URLSegment.Equals(urlSegment, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase));
        return page ?? default;
    }
}

I hope this blog helps you achieve similar type functionality!