ASP MVC 5 Attribute routing VS. Convention-based routing

Question

ASP MVC 5 has a new Routing called attribute routing. The way I see it, the routes are now scattered on every controller unlike with the convention-based that there is single location RouteConfig.cs where you can check your routes, which also serves as documentation of your sites routes in some way.

My question is it better to use Attribute routing over the convention-based routing in terms of readability and maintainability? And can someone suggest how to design routes for better maintainability and readibility.

Answer 1

To address your first question, scattering the routes has a number of advantages:

1. It puts the route information adjacent to the controller action that implements that route. This helps in debugging and troubleshooting, as well as providing an ability to quickly search for route information in your solution.

2. It reduces risk in the process of making changes to routes. In RouteConfig.cs or WebApiConfig.cs (in the case of Web API solutions), the possibility exists to inadvertently change the wrong route or otherwise adversely affect other parts of your application.

3. You may also want to include acceptable HTTP methods, permitted user types and registration priorities, which if included with the attribute-based routes, put all of that information together in one place.

This post provided inspiration and reinforcement for me on the above, and goes into more detail: http://kevinmontrose.com/2011/07/25/why-i-love-attribute-based-routing/