What kind of route would I need to provide vanity urls?

Question

I\'d like to provide my users a vanity url, something like:

www.foo.com/sergio

What kind of route would I need to create?

Imagine

Answer 1

one solution could be using custom route constraint as,

public class VanityUrlContraint : IRouteConstraint
{
    private static readonly string[] Controllers =
        Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetTypes().Where(x => typeof(IController).IsAssignableFrom(x))
            .Select(x => x.Name.ToLower().Replace("controller", "")).ToArray();

    public bool Match(HttpContextBase httpContext, Route route, string parameterName, RouteValueDictionary values,
                      RouteDirection routeDirection)
    {
        return !Controllers.Contains(values[parameterName].ToString().ToLower());
    }
}

and use it as

    routes.MapRoute(
        name: "Profile",
        url: "{username}",
        defaults: new {controller = "Account", action = "Profile"},
        constraints: new { username = new VanityUrlContraint() }
    );

    routes.MapRoute(
        name: "Default",
        url: "{controller}/{action}/{id}",
        defaults: new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional }
    );

downside of this approach, profile view for usernames same as existing controller name will not work, like if there are usernames like "asset", "location", and "AssetController", "LocationController" exists in project, profile view for "asset", "location" will not work.

hope this helps.

Answer 2

Have you tried:

routes.MapRoute(
"YourRouteName",
"{username}",
new {controller="YourController", action="Profile", username=UrlParameter.Optional}
);

This should trap www.foo.com/{username}. Remember that routes are checked in the order you add them, so you can add

routes.MapRoute(
"default",
"{controller}/{action}/{input}",
new {controller="controller", action="action", input=UrlParameter.Optional}
);

first to maintain the "default" behavior.