Text URL for website in asp.net

Question

I am developing my blog website in asp.net. I am saving my blog post in sql server 2005 database.

I am storing like this in my database

• PostId INT IDENTITY
• PostText
• PostAuthor
• PostedDate
• IsActive

So, at the code side when user is clicking on the tag/link. It is comming like this http://www.mysite.com/readBlog.aspx?Id=2

On the readBlog.aspx page I am reading the URL and fetching the data from the database. But this is something unprofessional. I want URL like this

Scott Gu post

How can I achieve it in simpler manner?

EDIT

It is just when I want to share the URL of my website I can do like this

http://www.mysite.com/readBlog/How-to-install-visual-studio

Answer 1

You will want to look into URL Rewriting.

Maybe take a look at a Scott Gu Post on the subject.

Answer 2

Take a look onto ASP.NET Routing.

Just register a route in your Global.asax:

protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);
}

public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
{
    routes.MapPageRoute("readblog",
        "readblog/{id}/{title}",
        "~/readBlog.aspx");
}

and then it could be accessed by using e.g.:

var path = RouteTable.Routes.GetVirtualPath(
    null, 
    "readblog", 
    new RouteValueDictionary {{ "id", blogId }, { "title", URLFriendly(title) }}
).VirtualPath;

where URLFriendly produces URL-friendly version of a title (a very nice example of it could be taken from Jeff Atwood's answer). This could produce URLs like:

/readBlog/2/how-to-install-visual-studio or /readBlog/3/something-else.