IIS: How to get the Metabase path?

iis, iis-6, metabase, mime-types

Solution

If you're working with the IIS config of your local machine i.e. your code and IIS are on the same box then it's sufficient to specify:

`IIS://Localhost/mimemap`

The `IIS:` portion is also known as a moniker in OLE parlance.

If you open the IIS6 metabase file (`C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\metabase.xml`) you'll find a large 'blob' of XML. This is in fact a flattened out tree structure.

Paths in the metabase are represented by `Location` attributes.

The moniker `IIS://localhost` maps to the `Location` path `/LM` which is effectively the tree root.

The moniker `IIS://localhost/MimeMap` maps to the `Location` path `/LM/MimeMap`.

If your code is accessing the metabase on remote machines then instead of specifiying `IIS://localhost/[path]`, one would specify `IIS://[RemoteMachineName]/[path]`. This is what Chris Crowes comment means.

`IIS://localhost/MimeMap` is also the master Mime Type list. All sites inherit this list (the IIS Metabase relies heavily on inherited properties).

If you wanted to override the Mime types for a specific site then you'd modify:

`IIS://localhost/W3SVC/[iisnumber]/ROOT/MimeMap`

It's useful to open up the IIS metabase file and have a dig around to understand what's going on under the bonnet.

Update:

To answer your question about why you can create a `DirectoryEntry` object where the path is invalid, `DirectoryEntry` is a general purpose wrapper object used to bind against different types of ADSI providers such as IIS, LDAP and WinNT. It permits creation of `DirectoryEntry` objects where there may not necessarily be a matching object at the path specified. Some ADSI provider operations may require this capability.

There is a static method on `DirectoryEntry` called `Exists` that you can use to test for the existence of objects. For example:

// Does Default Website exist?
if(DirectoryEntry.Exists("IIS://localhost/w3svc/1"))
{
  // Do work...
}

Problem

i'm trying to get the list of mime types known to an IIS server (which you can see was asked and and answered by me 2 years ago). The copy-pasted answer involves: `GetObject("IIS://LocalHost/MimeMap")` msdn `GetObject("IIS://localhost/mimemap")` KB246068 `GetObject("IIS://localhost/MimeMap")` Scott Hanselman's Blog `new DirectoryEntry("IIS://Localhost/MimeMap"))` Stack Overflow `new DirectoryEntry("IIS://Localhost/MimeMap"))` Stack Overflow `New DirectoryServices.DirectoryEntry("IIS://localhost/MimeMap")` Velocity Reviews You get the idea. Everyone agrees that you use a magical path iis://localhost/mimemap. And this works great, except for the times when it doesn't. The only clue i can find as to why it fails, is from an IIS MVP, Chris Crowe's, blog: ``` string ServerName = "LocalHost"; string MetabasePath = "IIS://" + ServerName + "/MimeMap"; // Note: This could also be something like // string MetabasePath = "IIS://" + ServerName + "/w3svc/1/root"; DirectoryEntry MimeMap = new DirectoryEntry(MetabasePath); ``` There are two clues here: - He calls `iis://localhost/mimemap` the Metabase Path. Which sounds to me like it is some sort of "path" to a "metabase". - He says that the path to the metabase could be something else; and he gives an example of what it could be like. Right now i, and the entire planet, are hardcoding the "MetabasePath" as ``` iis://localhost/MimeMap ``` What should it really be? What should the code be doing to construct a valid MetabasePath? Note: i'm not getting an access denied error, the error is the same when you have an invalid MetabasePath, e.g. `iis://localhost/SoTiredOfThis`

Original source