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Adam Kalsey

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Products and Tools

Mod_rewrite for IIS

20 Mar 2002

One of the most useful features of Apache is mod_rewrite, a module that allows Apache to translate requests for one URL into another. For instance, if your ecommerce site uses a URL like http://site.com/cgi-bin/catalog/product.pl?id=1234, you can use mod_rewrite so that shoppers can instead type and bookmark http://site.com/product/1234. Mod_rewrite will transparently translate that URL into what the server needs.

There are now two modules for IIS that perform the same type of function. IISRewrite implements most of mod_rewrite’s configuration and is used in much the same way as the Apache module. It costs $200.

ISAPI_Rewrite is very similar. It also includes most of the features of mod_rewrite and uses a text configuration file like Apache. It comes in three versions. A free version is available, but will be difficult to use if you host more than one site on a single Web server. A full version that supports different configuration files for each virtual site costs $46 per machine or you can buy an enterprise-wide license for $418.

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