ServiceStack web.config settings ignored when using custom path

Question

Introduction

My ServiceStack service handles route parameters that often contain periods ie: /people/search/b.j./upton. Initially, asp.net/ServiceStack would throw a "404 - Not Found" exception when it encountered this route. I tried encoding %2E the periods with no luck but eventually resolved the issue after seeing some related questions by setting the relaxedUrlToFileSystemMapping property (info) within my web.config.

Problem

This worked perfectly until today when I had to change my service location from the default path to a custom path by adding <location path="api"> (as described here) to my web.config. Since adding the location node in web.config the relaxedUrlToFileSystemMapping setting is no longer applied and my routes with periods /api/people/search/b.j./upton are breaking once again resulting in '404 - Not Found' exceptions from ServiceStack.

Setup

ServiceStack - v3.9.56

IIS 7.5 / IIS Express (happens on both)

web.config:

    <location path="api">
        <system.web>
          <httpHandlers>
            <add path="*" type="ServiceStack.WebHost.Endpoints.ServiceStackHttpHandlerFactory, ServiceStack" verb="*" />
          </httpHandlers>

           <httpRuntime relaxedUrlToFileSystemMapping="true"/>

    ...

    </location>

Question

Anyone have an idea why the relaxedUrlToFileSystemMapping property is ignored when it is moved from the default path to within my custom <location path="api"> in web.config?

Thanks!

Answer 1

After some tinkering with my web.config I was able to resolve this by moving the relaxedUrlToFileSystemMapping entry into it's own node outside of the <location> node. I'm not sure if this is a recommended approach (multiple <system.web> entries?) or might cause some other conflict(s) but after running a full system test of the service everything is working fine again so I'm going with this for now.

My updated and complete web.config for reference:

<configuration>

  <system.web>
    <httpRuntime relaxedUrlToFileSystemMapping="true"/>
  </system.web>

  <location path="api">

    <system.web>
      <httpHandlers>
        <add path="*" type="ServiceStack.WebHost.Endpoints.ServiceStackHttpHandlerFactory, ServiceStack" verb="*" />
      </httpHandlers>
    </system.web>

    <connectionStrings>
      <add name="AppDb" connectionString="data source=AppHost\SQLEXPRESS;Initial Catalog=db;User Id=AppUser;password=AppPwd;" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
    </connectionStrings>
    <system.webServer>
      <modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" />
      <validation validateIntegratedModeConfiguration="false" />
      <handlers>
        <add path="*" name="ServiceStack.Factory" type="ServiceStack.WebHost.Endpoints.ServiceStackHttpHandlerFactory, ServiceStack" verb="*" preCondition="integratedMode" resourceType="Unspecified" allowPathInfo="true" />
      </handlers>
    </system.webServer>
  </location>

</configuration>