Get URL with virtual directory included?

Question

I am maintaining an ASP.NET Web Forms website (and I do mean website, it's not a web application), and some of the static links are broken because they are hosting it with a virtual directory.

http://www.somewhere.com/MyApp

So, I started down the path to find a way to get an absolute URL given a virtual path to some page. And I found an article that mentioned you could take a link like this:

<a href="/ContactUs.aspx">Contact Us</a>

and do something like this:

<a href="<%= System.Web.VirtualPathUtility.ToAbsolute("/ContactUs.aspx") %>">Contact Us</a>

but that's not even working locally (i.e. against the ASP.NET Development Server) because my local path might be something like this:

http://localhost:7766/MyApp

but the path yielded by the VirtualPathUtility is this:

http://localhost:7766/ContactUs.aspx

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So, I decided to deploy it to my local IIS instance and see how it would behave. And the outcome was the same. The local IIS path is:

http://localhost/MyApp

but the path to the contact us page is:

http://localhost/ContactUs.aspx

---

One final hitch in the get along, there is one link in the application that looks like this:

<asp:HyperLink id="ContactUsLink"
    runat="server"
    Enabled="true"
    NavigateUrl="/ContactUs.aspx"
    Text="Contact Us">
</asp:HyperLink>

and the reason I say it's a hitch in the get along is because I know the inline code (like the examples above) don't work on server controls. It actually throws a compiler error:

Server tags cannot contain <% ... %> constructs.

---

So it appears I'm clearly moving down the wrong path, and I need some help. I'm looking forward to your answers.

Answer 1

Try:

Request.Url.GetLeftPart(UriPartial.Authority) + Request.ApplicationPath

Answer 2

You should prefix your addresses with a ~. so "~/Contact.aspx" on any runat=server control. This won't work for a standard tag. You can add runat=server to a normal tag to make it a server control.

The runtime will see the ~ and make it relative to what you're running as.

<asp:HyperLink id="ContactUsLink"
    runat="server"
    Enabled="true"
    NavigateUrl="~/ContactUs.aspx"
    Text="Contact Us">
</asp:HyperLink>