MVC 6 Routing, SPA fallback + 404 Error Page

Question

With RC1 of ASP.NET Core 1.0\'s MVC 6 you can map routes from within your Startup.Configure function when invoking app.UseMvc. I h

Answer 1

It took me some time to figure out how to do this without serving my index using MVC and to still receive 404s for missing files. Here's my http pipeline:

    public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IHostingEnvironment env, ILoggerFactory loggerFactory)
    {
        app.UseDefaultFiles();
        app.UseStaticFiles();

        app.UseMvc(                
            routes => {
                routes.MapRoute(
                    name: "api",
                    template: "api/{controller}/{action}/{id?}");

                // ## commented out since I don't want to use MVC to serve my index.    
                // routes.MapRoute(
                //     name:"spa-fallback", 
                //     template: "{*anything}", 
                //     defaults: new { controller = "Home", action = "Index" });
        });

        // ## this serves my index.html from the wwwroot folder when 
        // ## a route not containing a file extension is not handled by MVC.  
        // ## If the route contains a ".", a 404 will be returned instead.
        app.MapWhen(context => context.Response.StatusCode == 404 &&
                               !Path.HasExtension(context.Request.Path.Value),
                    branch => {
                           branch.Use((context, next) => {
                               context.Request.Path = new PathString("/index.html");
                               Console.WriteLine("Path changed to:" + context.Request.Path.Value);
                               return next();});

                    branch.UseStaticFiles();
        });            
    }