IIS Url Rewriter rewrite fails but redirect works flawlessly

Question

I have to set up a couple of apps on a new intranet server (Win 2008 R2 Standard SP1). I have been having some difficulty with a URL Rewriter rule. I had a similar rule working great on my local IIS (Win 7). The rule is designed to create a reverse proxy for a web service that enables jQuery AJAX requests from the client to avoid XSS.

The rule is as below and if I use this as is, and type an example URL into the browser:

http://srv01.domain.com/serviceproxy/workflow/Users/GetUsers?q=smith&max=10

I get a 404 response from the server. If I change the type to "Redirect" I get the response from the server expected (but obviously this will void my attempt to avoid XSS).

<rewrite>
  <rules>
    <rule name="Reverse Proxy - WCF Service" stopProcessing="true">
      <match url="serviceproxy/workflow/(.+)" />
      <action type="Rewrite" url="http://srv01.domain.com/WorkflowService/{R:1}" />
    </rule>
  </rules>
</rewrite>

Any ideas what might be missing from the server configuration? Is it a security setting somewhere that needs to be configured to allow the rewrite to occur?

Tyler Durden Tyler Durden · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-12T05:38:44

I found my issue. I didn't have Application Request Routing installed on this server. Either I forgot installing it on my other server or it was already on there for another reason.

Found this article that helped me resolve it.

http://www.iis.net/learn/extensions/url-rewrite-module/reverse-proxy-with-url-rewrite-v2-and-application-request-routing

IIS Url Rewriter rewrite fails but redirect works flawlessly

2 Answers