MVC 3 does not allow '.' in URL path when using IIS6

Question

Running IIS6.
So, '.' do not work in IIS6, but they work fine in the visual studio debugger and IIS7. Here's the steps to reproduce.

Steps to reproduce:
- Start with a blank MVC 3 project.
- Add A new view called "Index" and accept the defaults.
- Configure RegisterRoutes() as follows:

public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
{
    routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");

    routes.MapRoute(
        "QuerySomething",
        "QueryStuff/Index/{*aString}",
        new { controller = "QueryStuff", action = "Index", aString = UrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults
    );

    routes.MapRoute(
        "Default", // Route name
        "{controller}/{action}/{id}", // URL with parameters
        new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults
    );

}

Now, add a controller that returns Json:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Mvc;

    namespace MvcApplication1.Controllers
    {
        public class QueryStuffController : Controller
        {
            //
            // GET: /QueryStuff/

            public ActionResult Index(string aString)
            {
                return Json("aString:oye",JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
            }

        }
    }

1. Verify that the page is accessible:

   http://serverName/QueryStuff/Index/someInfo

You should get http 200.

1. Now try to get there with a '.' in the path

   http://serverName/QueryStuff/Index/someInfo.com

You should get a http 404 error. (Note that this error is NOT reproduceable when running through visual studio debugger. One must deploy the code to IIS.)

UPDATE
I modified Regex to route for email addresses and it made the problem even worse.

    routes.MapRoute(
        "QuerySomething",
        "QueryStuff/Index/{aString}"
        , new { controller = "QuerySomething", action = "Index" },
        new { aString = @"\b[A-Z0-9._%-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}\b" }
        ); 

With this its 404 everytime.

Answer 1

I don't think this is an MVC error as such, more a limitation of http? We had the same issues so ended up swapping "." for "!" in URLs then converting them back to "." in the controllers.

Answer 2

routes.MapRoute(
    "QuerySomething",
    "QueryStuff/Index/{*aString}",
    new { controller = "QueryStuff", action = "Index", aString = UrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults
);

You forgot the wildcard character in your route. (note aString above) However, one thing to note when using them is that it will also match http://serverName/QueryStuff/Index/something.com/blah/blah/blah/blah The dot is a file extension separator which is why it's not included. You could also do this if you know you'll always have extensions:

routes.MapRoute(
    "QuerySomething",
    "QueryStuff/Index/{aString}.{extension}",
    new { controller = "QueryStuff", action = "Index", aString = UrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults
);