How to implement URL rewriting with Windows Azure?

The easiest way to implement this would be a programmatic approach using the System.Web.Routing assembly.

This basically works by including the UrlRoutingModule in your web.config, and defining patterns that resolve the target page based on matching routes. If you are familiar with ASP.NET MVC, then you have used this routing strategy before, but MVC is not necessary to use Routing.

Here are some resources to help you get started:

• MSDN Documentation for the System.Web.Routing namespace - official documentation

• Scott Gu on URL Routing for MVC - * Note that this article explains routing in the context of an ASP.NET MVC application, however, the same methodology will work regardless of whether or not you are using MVC

• ASP.NET Routing... Goodbye URL rewriting, by Chris Cavanagh - An explanatory article

• Exploring System.Web.Routing, by Justin Etheredge - A case study explaining how to use routing independently of the MVC architecture

About Windows Azure ...

If you take this approach, it doesn't really matter that you are using Windows Azure. However, I found an article by Michael Kennedy called ASP.NET Routing in Windows Azure Using WebForms, explaining how to easily deploy such a solution on Windows Azure. The article even has a sample project for download.

Azure web roles have the IIS7 Url Rewriting module installed - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd573358.aspx

The "how to" for this module is at http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/460/using-the-url-rewrite-module/

For your Paris example, you basically need to setup a rule that maps the url

http://www.ipredikt.com/predictions/14/paris-hilton-will-win-the-nobel-peace-prize

to

http://www.ipredikt.com/details.aspx?id=14

This is something like:

Pattern -

^predictions/([0-9]+)/([_0-9a-z-]+)

Action -

 details.aspx?id={R:1}

For more on defining these rules see http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/461/creating-rewrite-rules-for-the-url-rewrite-module/