Routing Reserved Words in ASP.Net

Question

I have a legacy url that I wish to map to a route in my ASP.Net MVC application

e.g. http://my.domain.com/article/?action=detail&item=22

<

Answer 1

controller,action and area are the only reserved words in asp.net MVC. "Reserved" means that MVC gives special meaning to them, especially for Routing.

There are also others words (COM1-9, LPT1-9, AUX, PRT, NUL, CON), not specific to asp.net, than can not be in the url. This is explained why here and how to by-pass here.

Edit : There are no ways to use them because asp.net mvc relies on them in route data.

Here is an decompiled example taken from UrlHelper :

// System.Web.Mvc.RouteValuesHelpers
public static RouteValueDictionary MergeRouteValues(string actionName, string controllerName, RouteValueDictionary implicitRouteValues, RouteValueDictionary routeValues, bool includeImplicitMvcValues)
{
    RouteValueDictionary routeValueDictionary = new RouteValueDictionary();
    if (includeImplicitMvcValues)
    {
        object value;
        if (implicitRouteValues != null && implicitRouteValues.TryGetValue("action", out value))
        {
            routeValueDictionary["action"] = value;
        }
        if (implicitRouteValues != null && implicitRouteValues.TryGetValue("controller", out value))
        {
            routeValueDictionary["controller"] = value;
        }
    }
    if (routeValues != null)
    {
        foreach (KeyValuePair<string, object> current in RouteValuesHelpers.GetRouteValues(routeValues))
        {
            routeValueDictionary[current.Key] = current.Value;
        }
    }
    if (actionName != null)
    {
        routeValueDictionary["action"] = actionName;
    }
    if (controllerName != null)
    {
        routeValueDictionary["controller"] = controllerName;
    }
    return routeValueDictionary;
}

Answer 2

I have managed to crack it using a custom ModelBinder. I create a basic class called QueryString

    public class QueryString
    {
            private readonly IDictionary<string,string> _pairs;

            public QueryString()
            {
                    _pairs = new Dictionary<string, string>();
            }

            public void Add(string key, string value)
            {
                    _pairs.Add(key.ToUpper(), value);
            }

            public string Get(string key)
            {
                    return _pairs[key.ToUpper()];
            }

            public bool Contains(string key)
            {
                    return _pairs.ContainsKey(key.ToUpper());
            }
    }

Then I create my custom binder for that:-

    public class QueryStringModelBinder : IModelBinder
    {
            public object BindModel(ControllerContext controllerContext, ModelBindingContext bindingContext)
            {
                    var queryString = new QueryString();
                    var keys = controllerContext.HttpContext.Request.QueryString.AllKeys;

                    foreach (var key in keys)
                    {
                            queryString.Add(key, controllerContext.HttpContext.Request.QueryString[key]);
                    }

                    return queryString;
            }
    }

In my Global.asax I register it:-

ModelBinders.Binders.Add(typeof(QueryString), new QueryStringModelBinder());

Now I can use that in my RedirectController:-

public RedirectToRouteResult Item(QueryString queryString)
{
    // user QueryString object to get what I need
    // e.g. queryString.Get("action");
}