Getting hostname in MVC controller constructor

Question

Is it possible to get the current hostname from the controller constructor?

Both the Request and HttpContext objects are null, so Request.Url yields nothing.

public class HomeController : Controller
{
    private readonly MyEntities _entities;

    public HomeController()
    {
        //
        var hostname = Request.Url;
        if (hostname.Contains("localhost")) EFConnectionStringName="localhost";
        else EFConnectionStringName="default";
        _entities = new MyEntities(EFConnectionStringName);
    }
...

The greater problem I am trying to solve here is to choose a connection string for Entity Framework based upon the hostname. Ideas?

Answer 1

Request is indeed null during the construction of your Controller. Try this instead:

protected override void Initialize(System.Web.Routing.RequestContext requestContext)
{
    var hostname = requestContext.HttpContext.Request.Url.Host;

    // do something based on 'hostname' value
    // ....

    base.Initialize(requestContext);
}

Also, please note that Request.Url will not return the hostname but a Uri object from which you can extract the hostname using Url.Host.

See MSDN.