ASP.NET MVC not serving default document

Question

I have an ASP.NET MVC application where the default page should be index.html which is an actual file on disk.

I can browse to the file using www.mydomain.com/index.

Answer 1

ASP.Net MVC routing is controlled by the Global.asax / Global.asax.cs files. The out-of-the-box routing looks like this:

public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
{
    routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");

    routes.MapRoute(
        "Default", // Route name
        "{controller}/{action}/{id}", // URL with parameters
        new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults
        );
}

When no path is specified, ie. www.domain.tld/, the route is the empty string, "". Therefore the routing looks for a controller with that name. In other words, it looks for a controller with no name at all. When it finds no such controller it serves up a 404 NOT FOUND error page.

To solve the problem, either map that path to something meaningful or else ignore that route entirely, passing control over to the index.html file:

routes.IgnoreRoute("");