visual studio - Creating virtual directories in IIS express

Question

Is there any way to create a virtual directory in IIS express? I know that Cassini can't do this and it would be nice to be able to do this without using a full version of IIS.

I've got it so far that I can browse to my application locally in IIS express like this:

http://localhost:1132/

What I would like to do is create a virtual directory called "OffSiteStuff" and point it to some location on my C drive, like "c:offsitestuff" and then browse to items in that folder like this:

http://localhost:1132/OffSiteStuff/UserUploadedImage.jpg

I know I could do this with a folder within my site and still use IIS Express, or, for that matter plain old Cassini, but this folder will store images uploaded by users and I really don't want to have these images mixed up with application files.

The other, "go big" solution is to deploy the site onto a full blown Server 2008 IIS 7.5 instance every time I want to debug the features that use offsite content, but that is a bit cumbersome too.

Is there any way I can do this in the <System.WebServer /> Web config element?

Answer 1

IIS express configuration is managed by applicationhost.config.
You can find it in

Users<username>DocumentsIISExpressconfig folder.

Inside you can find the sites section that hold a section for each IIS Express configured site.

Add (or modify) a site section like this:

<site name="WebSiteWithVirtualDirectory" id="20">
   <application path="/" applicationPool="Clr4IntegratedAppPool">
     <virtualDirectory path="/" physicalPath="c:empwebsite1" />
   </application>
   <application path="/OffSiteStuff" applicationPool="Clr4IntegratedAppPool">
     <virtualDirectory path="/" physicalPath="d:empSubFolderApp" />
   </application>
    <bindings>
      <binding protocol="http" bindingInformation="*:1132:localhost" />
   </bindings>
</site>

Practically you need to add a new application tag in your site for each virtual directory. You get a lot of flexibility because you can set different configuration for the virtual directory (for example a different .Net Framework version)

EDIT Thanks to Fevzi Apayd?n to point to a more elegant solution.

You can achieve same result by adding one or more virtualDirectory tag to the Application tag:

<site name="WebSiteWithVirtualDirectory" id="20">
   <application path="/" applicationPool="Clr4IntegratedAppPool">
     <virtualDirectory path="/" physicalPath="c:empwebsite1" />
     <virtualDirectory path="/OffSiteStuff" physicalPath="d:empSubFolderApp" />
   </application>
    <bindings>
      <binding protocol="http" bindingInformation="*:1132:localhost" />
   </bindings>
</site>

Reference:

• Application tag for a Site
• Virtual Directory tag