ASP.NET MVC : Empty ActionLinks appearing

Question

I\'m using a default route, so that I don\'t need to specify the controller.

routes.MapRoute(
    \"Default\", 
    \"{action}/{id}\", 
     new { controlle         


        

Answer 1

Found the answer! There's a bug in MVC3 when using two consecutive optional UrlParameters, as detailed by Phil Haack, here routing-regression-with-two-consecutive-optional-url-parameters

You need to first declare a version of the route with only one optional parameter. So

routes.MapRoute(
    "Default", // Route name
    "{action}/{id}", // URL with ONE parameter
    new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", 
    id = UrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults
);

routes.MapRoute(
    "Default_with_page", // Route name
    "{action}/{id}/{page}", // URL with TWO parameters
    new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", 
    id = UrlParameter.Optional, page = UrlParameter.Optional } 
    // Parameter defaults
);

Seems really obvious now. If I'd actually included all the details I'm sure Serghei or someone else would have seen the problem, so thanks for all the help guys!