MVC: How to manage slahses in URL int the first route parameter

Question

I need to map two variables that could contain slashes, to a controller, in my ASP MVC application. Let\'s see this with an example.

Answer 1

If you cannot live with "old fashioned" style parameters and URL encoding, I think the only way you can achieve it is like this. Note that this is not tested but should basically work. Also I've put the controller name at the start and the Items separator is now essentially meaningless apart from acting as a delimiter.

Controller

Create a controller with a single, parameterless method:

public class GetRepo : Controller
{
    public ActionResult Index()
    {
        //TBC
        return View();
    }
}

Routing

Ensure routing is set up to allow http://www.example.com/GetRepo/anything to route to your index method.

Note that the GetRepo part is important as otherwise what happens if your URL is www.example.com/blah/repo/items/other/stuff and you happen to have a controller called blah?

The Magic

Now you deconstruct the Url manually by using Request.Url.AbsolutePath.

var urlPath = Request.Url.AbsolutePath;

//Split the path by '/', drop the first entry as it's the action method
var parts = urlPath.Split(new char[] { '/' }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries)
    .Skip(1).ToList();

//Find where "Items" separator appears:
var posOfItems = parts.IndexOf("Items");

//Everything before separator is the repo:
var repo = string.Join("/", parts.Take(posOfItems));

//Everything after separator is the path:
var path = string.Join("/", parts.Skip(posOfItems + 1));

//Now do something with repo/path variables