ASP.net MVC4 WebApi route with file-name in it

Question

I'm trying to get the following (and similar) urls to work in my ASP.net MVC4/WebApi project:

http://127.0.0.1:81/api/nav/SpotiFire/SpotiFire.dll

The route responsible for this url looks like this:

        config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
            name: "Nav",
            routeTemplate: "api/nav/{project}/{assembly}/{namespace}/{type}/{member}",
            defaults: new { controller = "Nav", assembly = RouteParameter.Optional, @namespace = RouteParameter.Optional, type = RouteParameter.Optional, member = RouteParameter.Optional }
        );

It works just fine if I remove the . in the file-name, or if I add a slash behind the URL, but that also means I can't use the Url.Route-methods etc. The error I get is a generic 404-error (image below).

I've tried adding <httpRuntime targetFramework="4.5" relaxedUrlToFileSystemMapping="true" /> to my web.config, and I've also tried adding

<compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.5">
  <buildProviders>
    <remove extension=".dll"/>
    <remove extension=".exe"/>
  </buildProviders>
</compilation>

And none of it seems to work. So my question is basically, how can I get this URL to work, and map correctly?

Answer 1

You could add the following handler to the <handlers> section of your <system.webServer>:

<add 
    name="ManagedDllExtension" 
    path="api/nav/*/*.dll" 
    verb="GET" 
    type="System.Web.Handlers.TransferRequestHandler" 
    preCondition="integratedMode,runtimeVersionv4.0" 
/>

This will make all requests containing .dll be served through the managed pipeline. Also notice how I have limited them only to the GET verb to limit the performance impact.

Answer 2

Found it. What's needed is this (and maybe some of the things I've added above in the original post):

<system.webServer>
  <modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" />
</system.webServer>

Answer 3

My trade off was to append /end to the end of route. .'s are ignored before the last /.

The equivalent URL would be http://127.0.0.1:81/api/nav/SpotiFire/SpotiFire.dll/end.

The benefit being that you don't get a performance hit on your assets.