Tricky Webresource.axd

vikassinghvi — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 19:05:00 GMT

One of the .Net web applications that I am working with uses Infragistics UI library and recently after upgrading to the newer version of Infragistics it stopped working.

On debugging it, I found that client side scripts related to Infragistics controls are not executing and it seems it could not find them.

To find out which scripts are this web page referencing , I did view source of the rendered Html file and noticed that there is not a single reference of any JavaScript or “.js” file but I noticed a reference to “WebResource.axd”.

I looked at all my application files and could not find webresource.axd anywhere. So what is this file and where it is.

On researching the issue further I found out that this WebResource.axd file is related to a new functionality in .Net where in it allows control developers to package up client files such as scripts, resources, images, style sheets etc and use then in the generated rendering simply by embedding them into assembly rather than having to scatter them into file system. It helps in making deployment more manageable, cleaner, simple and secure.

Without this feature any script, image and webresource would be URL accessible.

At this point I know what a webresource.axd file is but it still does not explain why I can not find this file. On digging up further I found out that an .axd file really does not exist physically but is spit out by an Http Handler.

To resolve this issue I had to look at IIS settings for this file extension (.axd) so that it does not look for physical existence of the file. For that I had to open application extension mapping dialog box in IIS. This dialog box has two check boxes

Script Engine
Check that file exists

For .axd file application mapping make sure that “Check that file exits” is unchecked and “script engine” is checked.

Vikas Singhvi : iis, Webresource.axd

Tricky Webresource.axd