Returning a 301 Redirect from a Controller Action

Question

On ASP.net MVC, what is the "correct" way to have a controller return a 301 Redirect to an external site?

The various RedirectTo-Function seem to only return either relative links or routes that i have mapped manually, but there is no way to say "Perform a 301 Redirect to http://example.com".

I think I could just set Response.StatusCode or use Response.Redirect, but is that the way it should be done in MVC? Or is there an official "correct way" of performing redirects?

Update: In the meantime, I wrote an ActionResult for that: PermanentRedirectResult

Update 2: Since ASP.net 4.0, Permanent Redirects are part of the Framework.

Answer 1

Use

Response.RedirectPermanent("http://www.google.com"); 

or for returning an ActionResult type from a controller:

return RedirectPermanent("http://www.google.com"); 

provided by the ASP.net 4.0 framework.

Answer 2

Since you are talking about redirecting to a URL that you do not know anything about the routing (be that an internal page (think classic ASP.NET), or some external resource) then the only thing you can do is set the status code, and send the user's browser on its way.

At this chain in MVC you are worried about getting the user to their View, but that View is not under your control and may not even be a View at all. So ultimately you are doing this best you can in this circumstance, and to my knowledge are not breaking any MVC "rule".

I hope that helps.

Answer 3

I perform redirects to support legacy URLs.

My controller looks something like this…

Public Class ThingController
    Inherits System.Web.Mvc.Controller

    Function Details(ByVal id As String) As ActionResult
        Dim RedirectId As Guid
        Select Case key
            Case "legacyurlone"
                RedirectId = New Guid("c564c0c1-c365-4b0c-bc33-fd4eadf0551b")
            Case "legacyurltwo"
                RedirectId = New Guid("157fa15b-8d5d-4f04-87cc-434f7ae93dfa")
            Case Else
                RedirectId = Guid.Empty
        End Select
        If Not RedirectId = Guid.Empty Then
            Response.StatusCode = Net.HttpStatusCode.MovedPermanently
            Response.RedirectLocation = Url.RouteUrl("IdOnly", New With {.id = RedirectId})
            Return Nothing
        End If
        Dim ThingId As Guid = New Guid(id)
        Dim db As New ThingEntities
        Dim Model As Thing = ...
        Return View(Model)
    End Function

    ...

End Class

I now wonder if I could handle this more cleanly with two routes and controller functions.