Create URL that does not map directly to file or folder

[Glasgow]

I'd like to publish URLs of the form

http://www.mysite.com/manchester

http://www.mysite.com/liverpool

http://www.mysite.com/glasgow

http://www.mysite.com/nottingham

etc but without physically setting up individual folders on the web site to correspond to each of the cities. I'd want to direct visitors to an ASP page that would parse the URL to extract the city and trigger logic accordingly. Can this be done - perhaps by directing 404 page not found errors to the ASP page I have in mind?

Thanks in advance.

 

[foxbox]

mmmm, is this acceptable:

http://www.mysite.com/?manchester

http://www.mysite.com/?liverpool

http://www.mysite.com/?glasgow

http://www.mysite.com/?nottingham

In default.asp (or index.asp or whatever the script file is that launches when the user goes to

http://www.mysite.com):

dim cCity
cCity = request.servervariables("QUERY_STRING")

 

[Glasgow]

Thanks for the suggestion. To be brutally honest I'd prefer to lose the questionmark. I'd rejected my "intuitive" approach that would have used something along similar lines (e.g. ?city=liverpool) for the same reason. Your suggestion is a step better though!

I'm tempted to trap 404 errors but I'm having problems when I direct to a .asp file rather than .html.

 

[foxbox]

Create a 404.asp error handling page.

For IIS: look under "Custom Errors" for the 404 error. Default it will redirect to an .HTML page. Point it to your 404.asp page.

In 404.asp check for city name. If not found, then it is really a "file not found" error!

 

[Glasgow]

Thanks foxbox. I've been giving that approach a try but I'm not sure how I retrieve the full text (or just the trailing city text) after the custom error page has been called. I can't see anything in the Request.ServerVariables collection.

Any ideas?

 

[foxbox]

The QUERY_STRING does return the info I need. I'm not sure how I missed this. I've been testing on both local and remote machines with different results and problems. I've also occasionally been calling the error trap page explicitly (so QUERY_STRING is blank as there is no question mark and the error page itself exists). I must have got confused - duh.

aha, so my suggestion is working....