URL Rewrite - Remove .html extension

Question

So the idea is to remove the .html extension from each page like so...

www.website.com/File.html > www.website.com/File
www.website.com/Folder/File.html > www.website.com/Folder/File

Now I've managed to do this using a URL Rewrite, but it means having to write a rewrite for each page, which is time consuming, not efficient and impractical say if the website is more than 20 pages.

Is there a way to do this by writing just one or two rewrites in the web.config?

I would also like to know!!! Help SO users UNITE! – Barrie Reader Apr 18 '12 at 14:22 — Barrie Reader, Apr 18 '12 at 14:22

score 9 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 18 '12 at 14:35

This solution worked for me in the end:

<rule name="RedirectUserFriendlyURL1" stopProcessing="true">
    <match url="^(.*)\.(.*)$" />
    <conditions>
        <add input="{REQUEST_METHOD}" pattern="^POST$" negate="true" />
    </conditions>
    <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}" appendQueryString="false" />
</rule>
<rule name="RewriteUserFriendlyURL1" stopProcessing="true">
    <match url="^(.*)$" />
    <conditions>
        <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" />
        <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" />
    </conditions>
    <action type="Rewrite" url="{R:1}.(.*)" />
</rule>

Nice one Ryano! I would vote you up - but we have been told off about voting up in the past... — Barrie Reader, Apr 18 '12 at 14:36
Unfortunately, this also removes .css, .js, and other extensions — Phil C, Jan 09 '16 at 15:13

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 15 '19 at 18:44

Adding the answer from Remove HTML extension with web config permanently here. This worked very nicely for me, using the URL Rewrite 2.1 module. You edit this into the applicationHost.config file. Thanks to https://stackoverflow.com/users/1821692/feeeper

<rewrite>
    <rules>
        <rule name="Hide .html ext">
            <match ignoreCase="true" url="^(.*)"/>
            <conditions>
                <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true"/>
                <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true"/>
                <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}.html" matchType="IsFile"/>
            </conditions>
            <action type="Rewrite" url="{R:0}.html"/>
        </rule>
        <rule name="Redirecting .html ext" stopProcessing="true">
            <match url="^(.*).html"/>
            <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAny">
                <add input="{URL}" pattern="(.*).html"/>
            </conditions>
            <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}"/>
        </rule>
    </rules>
</rewrite>

Improved my answer at: https://stackoverflow.com/a/62501711/12508260 — Jon R, Oct 15 '20 at 17:18

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 18 '12 at 14:11

Use the rewrite module for IIS 7.x:
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/webmaster/url-rewriting-with-iiss-url-rewrite-module/710

Although I have tried this, I've never gotten the actual rule set to do it automatically without having a rule per page name.

+1 to anyone who can shed light on this!

URL Rewrite - Remove .html extension

3 Answers3

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