IIS URL rewrite: rewrite one single URL to another, dropping all the rest

Question

I have a somewhat strange request: we need to rewrite a single url (eg: https://inbound.domain.com/index.php) to another (eg: http://outbound.local.com/register.php)

Any other request for a page should ideally be dropped..

This internal page references other resources on the same server (eg images are located in outbound.local.com/images/.

We have other sites running fine through URL rewrite, but I can't figure out how to filter/limit for a single page...

I tried setting inbound pattern to "https://inbound.domain.com/index.php" and rewrite URl to "http://outbound.local.com/register.php" but this ends up in a 404 not found..

We're running IIS10/url rewrite 2.0

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
    <system.webServer>
        <rewrite>
            <rules>
                <rule name="ReverseProxyInboundRule1" stopProcessing="true">
                    <match url="https://inbound.domain.com/index.php" />
                    <action type="Rewrite" url="http://outbound.local.com/register.php" appendQueryString="false" logRewrittenUrl="true" />
                    <serverVariables>
                        <set name="HTTP_X_ORIGINAL_ACCEPT_ENCODING" value="{HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING}" />
                        <set name="HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING" value="" />
                    </serverVariables>
                </rule>
            </rules>
            <outboundRules>
                <rule name="ReverseProxyOutboundRule1" preCondition="ResponseIsHtml1">
                    <match filterByTags="A, Form, Img" pattern="^http(s)?://outbound.local.com/(.*)" />
                    <action type="Rewrite" value="https://inbound.domain.com/{R:2}" />
                </rule>
                <rule name="RestoreAcceptEncoding" preCondition="NeedsRestoringAcceptEncoding">
                    <match serverVariable="HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING" pattern="^(.*)" />
                    <action type="Rewrite" value="{HTTP_X_ORIGINAL_ACCEPT_ENCODING}" />
                </rule>
                <rule name="Deal with href tags" preCondition="ResponseIsHtml1">
                    <match filterByTags="None" pattern="href=(.*?)http://outbound.local.com/(.*?)\s" />
                    <action type="Rewrite" value="href={R:1}https://inbound.domain.com/{R:2}" />
                </rule>
                <rule name="Deal with action tags" preCondition="ResponseIsHtml1">
                    <match filterByTags="None" pattern="action=(.*?)http://outbound.local.com/(.*?)\\" />
                    <action type="Rewrite" value="action={R:1}https://inbound.domain.com/{R:2}\" />
                </rule>
                <preConditions>
                    <preCondition name="ResponseIsHtml1">
                        <add input="{RESPONSE_CONTENT_TYPE}" pattern="^text/(.+)" />
                    </preCondition>
                    <preCondition name="NeedsRestoringAcceptEncoding">
                        <add input="{HTTP_X_ORIGINAL_ACCEPT_ENCODING}" pattern=".+" />
                    </preCondition>
                </preConditions>
            </outboundRules>
        </rewrite>
    </system.webServer>
</configuration>

Answer 1

You should not use the "Rewrite" action because it's a "server-side" rewrite.

You want a "Redirect" action to instruct the client (the browser) to re-connect to another URL.

For testing purposes, don't use the 301 – Permanent redirectType because the browser will cache this reponse and you'll need to empty the cache in case you did a mistake. Use 302 - Found for example

Additionally,ensure that the "match" is working, I think it should be "index.php" or "/index.php" instead of the full URL