How to convert url path to full or absolute url in ASP.NET MVC?

Question

I am developing Web Application using ASP.NET MVC in C#. But I am having a problem with retrieving full or absolute url. In ASP.NET MVC we get url like this. Url.Content("~/path/to/page"). It will return "path/to/page". But what I want to do is I have a string like this - "~/controller/action".

Let's consider my website domain is www.example.com. If I use Url.Content("~/controller/action"), it will just return "controller/action". I want to get "www.example.com/controller/action". How can I get it?

Answer 1

If you can use the Controller / Action Names...

You should use the Url.Action() method for this.

Typically, Url.Action() will return something similar to what you presently expect when provided with just the Controller and Action names :

// This would yield "Controller/Action"
Url.Action("Action","Controller"); 

However, when you pass in the protocol parameter (i.e. http, https etc.) then the method will actually return a complete, absolute URL. For the sake of convienence, you can use the Request.Url.Scheme property to access the appropriate protocol as seen below :

// This would yield "http://your-site.com/Controller/Action"
Url.Action("Action", "Controller", null, Request.Url.Scheme);

You can see an example of this in action here.

If you only have a relative URL string...

If you only have access to something like a relative URL (i.e. ~/controller/action), then you may want to create a function that will extend the current functionality of the Url.Content() method to support serving absolute URLs :

public static class UrlExtensions
{
    public static string AbsoluteContent(this UrlHelper urlHelper, string contentPath)
    {
        // Build a URI for the requested path
        var url = new Uri(HttpContext.Current.Request.Url, urlHelper.Content(contentPath));
        // Return the absolute UrI
        return url.AbsoluteUri;
    }
}

If defined properly, this would allow you to simply replace your Url.Content() calls with Url.AbsoluteContent() as seen below :

Url.AbsoluteContent("~/Controller/Action")

You can see an example of this approach here.