I believe you need to play around with the URL rewriter to break a URL down into its internal representation - this contains an "id" parameter that you can grab a PageReference from.

Something like the code below should sort you out:

//* Convert an external URL to an internal URL           
UrlBuilder newURL = new UrlBuilder("http://EPiServer6TestSite/Home-page/");
Global.UrlRewriteProvider.ConvertToInternal(newURL);

//* Now fetch the ID and get a page reference
PageReference result;
string pageIDslug = newURL.QueryCollection["id"];
if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(pageIDslug))
{
    string[] splitSlug = newURL.QueryCollection["id"].Split(new[] { '_' }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);

    int pageId;
    if (splitSlug.Length > 0 && int.TryParse(splitSlug[0], out pageId))
    {
        //* Do we have a work page ID?
        int workPageId;
        if (splitSlug.Length > 1 && int.TryParse(splitSlug[1], out workPageId))
        {
            result = new PageReference(pageId, workPageId);
        }
        else
        {
            result = new PageReference(pageId);
        }
    }
}

PageReference.ParseURL() could be another choice. Need to convert it to an internal URL first though.

Thanks, combination of both suggestions solved my problem

Tahir

Another solution - very similar to above too . It has same concept to covert the Url to internal state.

 UrlBuilder urlBuilder = new UrlBuilder(Url);
                    object pageReference;

                    Global.UrlRewriteProvider.ConvertToInternal(urlBuilder, out pageReference);

                   //or use PageReference.ParseUrl() here

                      if (pageReference != null && pageReference is PageReference)
                    {
                       //ur page reference logic here
                    }

"/mysite/en-gb/child/grandchild""/mysite/en-gb/child/grandchild"On a similar note, a complete newbie question by I can't seem to find the answer to this...

How do I get a reference to a page by absolute URL, e.g. "/mysite/child/grand-child"

PageReference.ParseURL looks like the correct method, but what am I missing?

var url = "/mysite/child/grand-child";
var pageRef = PageReference.ParseUrl(url); <-- returns PageReference.EmptyReference
var page = DataFactory.Instance.GetPage(pageRef);

Eventually I will end up with several sites and languages, so the tree structure would be like so for example, so ideally i'd like to be able to retrieve the reference relatively...

"/mysite1/en-gb/child/grandchild"
"/mysite1/fr-fr/child/grandchild"

"/mysite2/en-gb/child/grandchild"
"/mysite2/it-it/child/grandchild"

"/mysite3/en-gb/child/grandchild"
"/mysite3/es-es/child/grandchild"

Let me know if you need info.

thanks