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ASP.NET Web Pages - Folders


This chapter introduces the knowledge about folders and folder paths.


In this chapter, you will learn:


Logical Folder Structure

Below is a typical ASP.NET website folder structure:


Physical Folder Structure

In the above website, the "Images" folder on the computer might have the following physical folder structure:

C:\Documents\MyWebSites\Demo\Images


Virtual Names and Physical Names

Taking the example above:

The virtual name for a website image might be "Images/pic31.jpg".

The corresponding physical name is "C:\Documents\MyWebSites\Demo\Images\pic31.jpg".


URL and Paths

A URL is used to access files within a website: http://www.tutorialpro.org/html/html-tutorial.html

The URL corresponds to the physical file on the server: C:\MyWebSites\tutorialpro\html\html-tutorial.html

A virtual path is a shorthand representation of a physical path. If you use a virtual path, you don't need to update the paths when you change your domain name or move your website to another server.

| URL | http://www.tutorialpro.org/html/html-tutorial.html | | Server Name | tutorialpro | | Virtual Path | /html/html-tutorial.html | | Physical Path | C:\MyWebSites\tutorialpro\html\html-tutorial.html |

The root directory of a disk drive is written as C:, but the root directory of a website is / (forward slash).

The virtual path of a web folder is usually different from its physical folder.

In your code, decide whether to use physical paths or virtual paths based on your coding needs.

ASP.NET folder paths have three tools: the ~ operator, the Server.MapPath method, and the Href method.


~ Operator

Use the ~ operator to specify a virtual path in programming code.

If you use the ~ operator, you don't need to change any of your code when your site is moved to a different folder or location:


Server.MapPath Method

The Server.MapPath method converts a virtual path (/index.html) into a physical path that the server can understand (C:\Documents\MyWebSites\Demo\default.html).

You can use this method when you need to open data files on the server (only complete physical paths can access data files):

In the next chapter of this tutorial, you will learn more about reading (and writing) data files on the server.


Href Method

The Href method converts the paths used in the code into paths that the browser can understand (the browser cannot understand the ~ operator).

You can use the Href method to create paths for resources (such as image files and CSS files).

This method is typically used in HTML elements like <a>, <img>, and <link>:

The Href method is a method of the WebPage object.

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