ASP.NET MVC Default URL View

Question

I'm trying to set the Default URL of my MVC application to a view within an area of my application. The area is called "Common", the controller "Home" and the view "Index".

I've tried setting the defaultUrl in the forms section of web.config to "~/Common/Home/Index" with no success.

I've also tried mapping a new route in global.asax, thus:

routes.MapRoute(
        "Area",
        "{area}/{controller}/{action}/{id}",
        new { area = "Common", controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = "" }
    );

Again, to no avail.

Answer 1

The route you listed only works if they explicitly type out the URL:

yoursite.com/{area}/{controller}/{action}/{id}

What that route says is:

If I get a request that has a valid {area}, a valid {controller} in that area, and a valid {action} in that controller, then route it there.

What you want is to default to that controller if they just visit your site, yoursite.com:

routes.MapRoute(
    "Area",
    "",
    new { area = "Common", controller = "Home", action = "Index" }
);

What this says is that if they don't append anything to http://yoursite.com then to route it to the following action: Common/Home/Index

Also, put it at the top of your routes table.

Makes sure you're also letting MVC know to register the areas you have in the application:

Put the following in your Application_Start method in the Global.asax.cs file:

AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas();