Hi John,

I am writing this here because you are an expert an URL rewriting and generally a smart guy and I would appreciate your comments ;)

Basically, in my Smart-Thinker UserProfile module, instead of this URL:

http://www.pokerdiy.com/Home/PokerPlayerProfile/tabid/391/ID/1/Default.aspx

I want to use the DisplayName:

http://www.pokerdiy.com/rodney

So, from my limited knowledge of URL rewriting, I need to have some sort of look-up title that maps DisplayName (I don't think this has to be unique, which could be an issue) to UserID. I then rewrite the URL with the new format. This sounds simple enough in theory, but how do I actually implement this? It does not neccessarily have to be a module solution (although it would be good if I could somehow build it into my UserProfile module for ease of use) but I am open to suggestions (ie. IIS changes, HTTP Module etc.).

My first thought was an HTTP handler in the UserProfile module (like my image handler). So you would call it like this directly:

    http://www.pokerdiy.com/desktopmodules/smartthinker_userprofile/Name/Rodney/GetUser.aspx

then once that is working I could use PageBlaster to make it even prettier and change the URL to:

    http://www.pokerdiy.com/rodney

The handler itself would do a query on the DB by DisplayName and rewrite (?!?!) the URL to UserId (this is so that all other satellite modules on the page that use userID function as normal).

I am worried about performance hits with this approach and not sure how to actualy implement the last bit technically. Any comments please?