Confused: Can I do URL rewrite in Application.cfc?

[Guest]

My current website uses old fashioned links like:
mysite.com/topic.cfm/?id=600

I'd like to rewrite them so they look like:
mysite.com/topics/this-topic-is-interesting-600

Note there is no ".cfm" in the new URL.

Its easy enough to rewrite the links, but how do I handle the HTTP requests in application.cfc? I was assuming there was a variable I could set so that if the URL contained "topics/" I could tell CF to process topic.cfm .. but I can't find it.

Do you need to intercept and parse the requests outside of CF?

[Newsgroup_User]

Do you need to intercept and parse the requests outside of CF?

Yes, in the web server; IIS, Apache, ect. Without the normal .cfm
extension the request is not getting passed to the CF engine by the web
server. You need to do the rewriting there so that the web server knows
what to do with these types of requests.

By the time the request has gotten to Application.cfm the system has
determined that it is a coldFusion resource.

Now a common middle ground would be URLS like
mysite.com/topic.cfm/this-topic-is-interesting/600.

This will get passed to ColdFusion and there is code out there that will
process the extra 'directories' into the URL parameters they are meant
to replace and use them as such.

[Guest]

Thank you Ian, I have it working now using one of the third-party URL rewriting packages.. I appreciate the help, you saved me hours (if not days) of frustration.