ASP.NET MVC Routing Question

Question

I must be dense. After asking several questions on StackOverflow, I am still at a loss when it comes to grasping the new routing engine provided with ASP.NET MVC. I think I\'v

Answer 1

Here is an alternative way to standar route registration:

1. Download RiaLibrary.Web.dll and reference it in your ASP.NET MVC website project

2. Decoreate controller methods with the [Url] Attributes:

public SiteController : Controller
{
    [Url("")]
    public ActionResult Home()
    {
        return View();
    }

    [Url("about")]
    public ActionResult AboutUs()
    {
        return View();
    }

    [Url("store/{?category}")]
    public ActionResult Products(string category = null)
    {
        return View();
    }
}

BTW, '?' sign in '{?category}' parameter means that it's optional. You won't need to specify this explicitly in route defaults, which is equals to this:

routes.MapRoute("Store", "store/{category}",
new { controller = "Store", action = "Home", category = UrlParameter.Optional });

3. Update Global.asax.cs file

public class MvcApplication : System.Web.HttpApplication
{
    public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
    {
        routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");

        routes.MapRoutes(); // This do the trick
    }

    protected void Application_Start()
    {
        RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);
    }
}

How to set defaults and constraints? Example:

public SiteController : Controller
{
    [Url("admin/articles/edit/{id}", Constraints = @"id=\d+")]
    public ActionResult ArticlesEdit(int id)
    {
        return View();
    }

    [Url("articles/{category}/{date}_{title}", Constraints =
         "date=(19|20)\d\d-(0[1-9]|1[012])-(0[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])")]
    public ActionResult Article(string category, DateTime date, string title)
    {
        return View();
    }
}

How to set ordering? Example:

[Url("forums/{?category}", Order = 2)]
public ActionResult Threads(string category)
{
    return View();
}

[Url("forums/new", Order = 1)]
public ActionResult NewThread()
{
    return View();
}