ASP.NET MVC Url Route supporting (dot)

Question

I hope that you can help me with the below problem.

I am using ASP.NET MVC 3 on IIS7 and would like my application to support username's with dots.

Example: http://localhost/john.lee

This is how my Global.asax looks like: (http://localhost/{username})

routes.MapRoute(
    "UserList",
    "{username}",
    new { controller = "Home", action = "ListAll" }
);

The applications works when I access other pages such as http://localhost/john.lee/details etc.

But the main user page doesn't work, I would like the app to work like Facebook where http://www.facebook.com/john.lee is supported.

I used below code and it didn't work for me at all:

<httpRuntime relaxedUrlToFileSystemMapping="true" />

I was able to use below code and get the app to accept dots but I definitely wouldn't like to use below code for many different reason, please tell me there is a way to overcome this problem.

<modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="false" />

Answer 1

Add a UrlRoutingHandler to the web.config. This requires your url to be a bit more specific however (f.e. /Users/john.lee). This forces every url starting with /Users to be treated as a MVC url:

<system.webServer>    
  <handlers>      
    <add name="UrlRoutingHandler" 
         type="System.Web.Routing.UrlRoutingHandler, 
               System.Web, Version=4.0.0.0, 
               Culture=neutral, 
               PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" 
         path="/Users/*" 
         verb="GET"/>      
  </handlers>
</system.webServer>