Niversity: Abdul Majid Niazai

HE W A D UNIVERSITY
Asp.net
Abdul Majid Niazai
[email protected]
ASP.NET Web Pages - Folders
 This chapter is about folders and folder paths.
In this chapter you will learn:
 About Logical and Physical folder structures

 About Virtual and Physical names
 About web URLs and Paths
Logical Folder Structure
 Below is a typical folder structure for an ASP.NET web pages web site:
•The "Account" folder contains logon and security files

•The "App_Data" folder contains databases and data files
•The “bin” it contains all os and setup file
•The "Images" folder contains images
•The "Scripts" folder contains browser scripts
•The "Shared" folder contains common files (like layout
and style files)
Physical Folder Structure
 The physical structure for the "Images" folder at the website above might look
like this on a computer:
 C:\Johnny\Documents\MyWebSites\Demo\Images
Virtual and Physical Names
 From the example above:

 The virtual name of a web picture might be "Images/pic31.jpg".
 But the physical name is
"C:\Johnny\Documents\MyWebSites\Demo\Images\pic31.jpg"
URLs and Paths
 URLs are used to access files from the web:

https://www.hewad.com/html/html5_intro.asp
 The URL corresponds to a physical file on a server:

C:\MyWebSites\hewad\html\html5_intro.asp
 A virtual path is shorthand to represent physical paths. If you use virtual paths, you can
move your pages to a different domain (or server) without having to update the paths.
 URL https://www.hewade.com/html/html5_intro.asp
 Server name Hewad
 Virtual path /html/html5_intro.asp
 Physical path C:\MyWebSites\hewad\html\html5_intro.asp
note
 The root on a disk drive is written like C:\, but the root on a web site is /
(forward slash).
 The virtual path of a web folder is (almost) never the same as the physical
folder.
 In your code you will, reference both the physical path and the virtual path,
depending on what you are coding.
 ASP.NET has 3 tools for working with folder paths: the ~ operator, the
Server.MapPath method, and the Href method
The ~ Operator
 To specify the virtual root in programming code, use the ~ operator.

 If you use the ~ operator, instead of a path, you can move your website to a
different folder or location without changing any code:
 var myImagesFolder = "~/images";
var myStyleSheet = "~/styles/StyleSheet.css";
The Server.MapPath Method
 The Server.MapPath method converts a virtual path (/default.cshtml) to a physical path

that the server can understand (C:\Johnny\MyWebSited\Demo\default.cshtml).
 You will use this method when you need to open data files located on the server (data files
can only be accessed with a full physical path):
 var pathName = "~/dataFile.txt";
var fileName = Server.MapPath(pathName);
The Href Method
 The Href method converts a path used in the code to a path that the browser can
understand (the browser cannot understand the ~ operator).
 You use the Href method to create paths to resources like image files, and CSS files.
 You will often use this method in HTML <a>, <img>, and <link> elements:
 @{var myStyleSheet = "~/Shared/Site.css";}


<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="@Href(myStyleSheet)" />


<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/Shared/Site.css" />
Before Web Startup: _AppStart
 Most server side code are written inside individual web pages. For example, if
a web page contains an input form, the web page typically contains server
code for reading the data.
 However, by creating a page named _AppStart in the root of your site, you
can have startup code executed before the site starts. If this page exists,
ASP.NET runs it the first time any page in the site is requested.
 Typical use for _AppStart is startup code and initialization of global values
like counters and global names.
 Note 1: _AppStart should have the same file extension as your web pages,
like: _AppStart.cshtml.
 Note 2: _AppStart has an underscore prefix. Because of this, the files cannot
be browsed directly.
Before Every Page: _PageStart
 Just like _AppStart runs before your site starts, you can write code that
runs before any page in each folder.
 For each folder in your web, you can add a file named _PageStart.
 Typical use for _PageStart is setting the layout page for all pages in a
folder, or checking that a user is logged in before running a page.
How Does it Work?
Explaination
 When a request comes in, ASP.NET checks whether _AppStart exists. If so, and this is the
first request to the site, _AppStart runs.
 Then ASP.NET checks whether _PageStart exists. If so, _PageStart runs, before the
requested page.
 If you include a call to RunPage() inside _PageStart you specify where you want the
requested page to run. If not, the _PageStart runs before the requested page.
End of Chapter 05

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HE W A D UNIVERSITY

In this chapter you will learn:

 About Logical and Physical folder structures

•The "Account" folder contains logon and security files

 From the example above:

 URLs are used to access files from the web:

 The URL corresponds to a physical file on a server:

 To specify the virtual root in programming code, use the ~ operator.

 The Server.MapPath method converts a virtual path (/default.cshtml) to a physical path

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