Optimizely Content Management System (CMS) products use Virtual Path Providers (VPP) to map physical paths to virtual paths in the site. Protected modules use VPPs so you can have a single physical location for the modules even though the virtual path on the site is configurable.
ASP.NET uses VPP to load and compile content. See [ASP.NET Compilation Overview at MSDN](🔗).
When ASP.NET gets a request to supply a file that is based on a virtual path, it looks in the registered chain of providers and feeds the virtual path to the first provider in the chain.
The provider interprets the path to determine if it is a file that belongs in the providers underlying file system. If so, it serves the file back to ASP.NET, or otherwise calls the next provider to serve the file.
A provider can accept the virtual path as valid for the file system, even if the file does not exist, in which case it returns a null reference and eventually turns up as an HTTP 404 response.
A file served from a provider must extend the abstract class of [System.Web.Hosting.VirtualFile](🔗). For serving directories, the base class is [System.Web.Hosting.VirtualDirectory](🔗). The core API is intended only for serving files but this behavior is extended in the Optimizely products.
You must provide a virtual path (relative to a URL) when you request instances using the `HostingEnvironment`. The following table shows examples of virtual paths (assuming the application root folder is `http://localhost/EPiServerSample`.
Note
The two first examples map to the same URL. The provider implementation handles the two different virtual path requests similarly.
A virtual path cannot be relative to a host subfolder because the hosting environment cannot determine what it is relative to. A virtual path must be absolute from the host (as above) or resolved to absolute if in syntax of **~/**. It also follows the URI syntax of an HTTP path, in other words forward slash (/), no query string, and so on.
Use the `System.Web.VirtualPathUtility` class to convert between relative and absolute paths and to handle slashes.
There is a specific distinction between **~/myfolder** and **~/myfolder/**. The first refers to a file, the second to a directory.
### Configure a Virtual Path Provider
ASP.NET does not have a configuration section in _web.config_ for registering providers. You can register providers only by API calls at runtime. Episerver Framework has a configuration section that lets you do this in the configuration file. The section is located under the node _/configuration/episerver.framework/virtualPathProviders_.
Note
The order of the configured providers matters. The provider at top are instantiated first and added to the top of the provider chain. The next provider also is added to the top of the chain, pushing the previous down one step and so on.
The following example shows the configuration from the _/configuration/episerver.framework/virtualPathProviders_ section:
The filesystem path to use as the root. If Physical path has no value then it points to a directory with virtual path provider name under basePath\*. You can also rebase a `PhysicalPath` if it starts with \[appDataPath\] (for example, \[appDataPath\]\\Folder1) which means the value of physical path is rebased from basePath\*.
\*You can find the `basePath` in the **Episerver framework** section in the _Episerver.framework_ configuration file.
Note
`
VirtualPathMappedProvider` uses the _/configuration/episerver.framework/virtualPathMappings_ section to map paths.
### IIS Location Settings
The following example shows how to configure the static file handler in IIS: