File to define route in MVC3

Question

I have this file :

<fru>
 <url action="product" controler="Home" params="{id=123}" >this_is_the_an_arbitrary_url_of_a_product.html</url>
 <url action="customer" controler="Home" params="{id=445}" >this_is_the_an_arbitrary_url_of_a_customer.html</url>
... other urls ...
</fru>

I'm looking for binding this file or this object structure with the MVCHandler, in order to map the request to the good action with the params. It's important for the url me that the urls doesn't respect any structure rules.

Is there a way to do this?

Answer 1

You can set up completely arbitrary routes for an MVC project, free from any specific URL structure.

In Global.asax.cs:

public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
{
    routes.MapRoute(
        "",
        "superweirdurlwithnostructure.whatever",
        new { controller = "Home", action = "Products", id = 500 }
    );
}

Make sure you do this before mapping the normal routes. These specific ones need to go first, or the default route entries will stop the requests from coming through.

If you want to base it on the XML file you showed, I'd do something as simple as:

XDocument routes = XDocument.Load("path/to/route-file.xml");
foreach (var route in routes.Descendants("url"))
{
    //pull out info from each url entry and run the routes.MapRoute(...) command
}

The XML file itself could of course be embedded in the project in some way, that's up to you.

Edit:

As for the handling of parameters, you can easily send any parameters you want using the routes.MapRoute(...) command. Just add them like this:

routes.MapRoute(
    "",
    "my/route/test",
    new { controller = "Home", action = "Index",
          id = "500", value = "hello world" } // <- you can add anything you want
);

Then in the action, you simply do it like this:

//note that the argument names match the parameters you listed in the route:
public ActionResult Index(int id, string value)
{
    //do stuff
}