Handling Relative & Absolute URLs with System.Web.VirtualPathUtility

Until today, I translated between relative & absolute paths in ASP.NET "by hand". Example:

 

private string ToAbsolute(string url)
{
if (url.StartsWith("~"))

return (HttpContext.Current.Request.ApplicationPath +
url.Substring(1)).Replace("//", "/");
return url;
}

 

But now, it turns out the with ASP.NET 2.0... I can achieve this effect... by simply calling VirtualPathUtility:

 

VirtualPathUtility.ToAbsolute(url)

 

Much simpler... don't you think?