ASP.NET MVC Routing with Default Controller

Question

For a scenario, I have a ASP.NET MVC application with URLs that look like the following:

http://example.com/Customer/List
http://example.com/Customer/List/Page/2
http://example.com/Customer/List
http://example.com/Customer/View/8372
http://example.com/Customer/Search/foo/Page/5

These URLs are achieved with following routes in Global.asax.cs

routes.MapRoute(
    "CustomerSearch"
    , "Customer/Search/{query}/Page/{page}"
    , new { controller = "Customer", action = "Search" }
);

routes.MapRoute(
    "CustomerGeneric"
    , "Customer/{action}/{id}/Page/{page}"
    , new { controller = "Customer" }
);

//-- Default Route
routes.MapRoute(
    "Default",
    "{controller}/{action}/{id}",
    new { controller = "Customer", action = "Index", id = "" }
);

These all have gone well until a new requirement arrived and wants to drop keyword 'Customer' off the URL, to make the URLs look like:

http://example.com/List
http://example.com/List/Page/2
http://example.com/List
http://example.com/View/8372
http://example.com/Search/foo/Page/5

Edit: corrected example links, thanks to @haacked.

I tried to add new MapRoutes to take {action} only and have default controller set to Customer. eg/

routes.MapRoute(
    "CustomerFoo"
    , "{action}"
    , new { controller = "Customer", action = "Index" }
);

This seems to work, however now all links generated by Html.ActionLink() are weird and no longer URL friendly.

So, is this achievable? Am I approaching in the right direction?

Answer 1

don't mix a rule like: "{action}/{id}" with one that's "{controller}/{action}/{id}" ... specially when id in the later has a default value i.e. is optional.

In that case you have nothing that allows routing to know which one is the right one to use.

A workaround, if that's what you need, would be to add a constrain (see this) to the action in the earlier to a set of values i.e. List, View. Of course that with these types of rules, you can't have a controller with the same name of an action.

Also remember that if you specify a default action & id in the "{action}/{id}" rule, that will be used when you hit the route of your site.

Answer 2

Why does the first URL in the new list still have "Customer". I assume that's a typo and you meant:

• http://example.com/List
• http://example.com/List/Page/2
• http://example.com/List
• http://example.com/View/8372
• http://example.com/Search/foo/Page/5

The following routes work for me:

routes.MapRoute(
    "CustomerSearch"
    , "Search/{query}/Page/{page}"
    , new { controller = "Customer", action = "Search" }
);

routes.MapRoute(
    "CustomerGeneric"
    , "{action}/{id}/Page/{page}"
    , new { controller = "Customer" }
);

//-- Default Route
routes.MapRoute(
    "Default",
    "{action}/{id}",
    new { controller = "Customer", action = "Index", id = "" }
);

How are you generating your links. Since the Controller is no longer in the URL of your route (aka, you don't have "{controller}" in the route URL), but it's a default value, you need to make sure to specify the controller when generating routes.

Thus instead of

Html.ActionLink("LinkText", "ActionName")

do

Html.ActionLink("LinkText", "ActionName", "Customer")

Why? Suppose you had the following routes.

routes.MapRoute(
    "Default",
    "foo/{action}",
    new { controller = "Cool" }
);

routes.MapRoute(
    "Default",
    "bar/{action}",
    new { controller = "Neat" }
);

Which route did you mean when you call this?

<%= Html.ActionLink("LinkText", "ActionName") %>

You can differentiate by specifying the controller and we'll pick the one that has a default value that matches the specified one.