Call an IIS Web Service without the .asmx extension

Question

I have written a .NET web Service that is to be consumed by a client outside of my control (my server is a simulator for a live server written in PHP). The web service works as desired but the client does not have the ability to add the .asmx extension, or any extension for that matter, in their calls. They basically use http://localhost/soap/MyWebService while IIS expects http://localhost/soap/MyWebService.asmx. Is there any way to make IIS respond to requests without the .asmx extension?

Answer 1

Add a wildcard mapping, which will route all requests through ASP.NET:

http://professionalaspnet.com/archive/2007/07/27/Configure-IIS-for-Wildcard-Extensions-in-ASP.NET.aspx

You'll also need to do some URL rewriting, to allow the incoming request http://localhost/soap/MyWebService to map to http://localhost/soap/MyWebService.asmx.

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/02/26/tip-trick-url-rewriting-with-asp-net.aspx

Basically, you could add something like the following to your Application_BeginRequest method:

string path = Request.Path;
if (path.Contains("/soap/") && !path.EndsWith(".asmx"))
    Context.RewritePath(path + ".asmx");

I haven't tested it (and it's a HACK) but it should get you started.