How do I route images using ASP.Net MVC routing?

You can’t do this “out of the box” with the MVC framework. Remember that there is a difference between Routing and URL-rewriting. Routing is mapping every request to a resource, and the expected resource is a piece of code.

However – the flexibility of the MVC framework allows you to do this with no real problem. By default, when you call routes.MapRoute(), it’s handling the request with an instance of MvcRouteHandler(). You can build a custom handler to handle your image urls.

1. Create a class, maybe called ImageRouteHandler, that implements IRouteHandler.

2. Add the mapping to your app like this:

   routes.Add("ImagesRoute", new Route("graphics/{filename}",
new ImageRouteHandler()));

3. That’s it.

Here’s what your IRouteHandler class looks like:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Compilation;
using System.Web.Routing;
using System.Web.UI;

namespace MvcApplication1
{
    public class ImageRouteHandler : IRouteHandler
    {
        public IHttpHandler GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext)
        {
            string filename = requestContext.RouteData.Values["filename"] as string;

            if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(filename))
            {
                // return a 404 HttpHandler here
            }
            else
            {
                requestContext.HttpContext.Response.Clear();
                requestContext.HttpContext.Response.ContentType = GetContentType(requestContext.HttpContext.Request.Url.ToString());

                // find physical path to image here.  
                string filepath = requestContext.HttpContext.Server.MapPath("~/test.jpg");

                requestContext.HttpContext.Response.WriteFile(filepath);
                requestContext.HttpContext.Response.End();

            }
            return null;
        }

        private static string GetContentType(String path)
        {
            switch (Path.GetExtension(path))
            {
                case ".bmp": return "Image/bmp";
                case ".gif": return "Image/gif";
                case ".jpg": return "Image/jpeg";
                case ".png": return "Image/png";
                default: break;
            }
            return "";
        }
    }
}