In the last post, I was clearly overjoyed with my new HTTP handler to deal with some PDF display issues. This thing worked exactly as I had hoped it would on my development box running from the IDE. Unfortunately, once I copied my code base up to the test server (um, actually that was my production server, but that's another issue) I no longer had a working HTTP handler. In fact, the test server (prod) simply dropped a 404 error where it should have shown a PDF via my handler.

So, the first thing I was thinking was that my abstract class for the handler was not being reconized on the test/prod box. So, strong named it, recompiled, updated the reference, added it as an assembly to the web.config, and finally (just for good measure) installed it into the GAC. Guess what? None of these things worked. Still getting the stupid 404.

Searched on Google, found little help. Searched on Google again, still found little help. Finally, found this little gem on the ASP.Net Forums: http://forums.asp.net/t/1177230.aspx. In case they drop this thread in the future, let me give you the gist: IIS has a little area that no matter what your web.config says to do, it just won't care. So, I opened up IIS on my problem machine, went to the properties of my web site, clicked on the "Configuration" button on the Directory tab, and finally added a new entry for PDF to point it to the aspnet_isapi.dll like all the other extensions listed in that box.

SOLVED and my lovely handler now renders my dynamic PDF files like a champ on my test (prod) system as well as in my IDE.