Chapter 8. HttpHandlers and HttpModules

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IN THIS CHAPTER

• An Overview of ASP.NET Request Handling

• HttpModules

• HttpHandlers

• Dynamic Handler Assignment

• Class Reference

In ASP.old, you just couldn't do certain things using ASP. If you wanted to create something similar to the output caching in ASP.NET, you were forced to step outside ASP.old and use Internet Server API (ISAPI) filters. If you wanted to create a program that handled all files with a certain extension, you had to step outside ASP. If you wanted to write something that participated in the processing of each and every page, you had to step outside ASP.

One of the goals of ASP.NET was to allow you to do everything you could potentially conceive of related to Web programming directly in the product. It shouldn't limit you. To that end, Microsoft added two new concepts: HttpModules and HttpHandlers. These did not exist inside of ASP.old. To find analogous functionality, you had to step outside into the world of ISAPI programming. HttpModules and HttpHandlers are fairly similar to ISAPI filters, but they implement slightly different functionality.

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