ASP.NET MVC Routes with "File Extensions"

Question

I want to make an MVC route for a list of news, which can be served in several formats.

news -> (X)HTML
news.rss -> RSS
news.atom -> ATOM

Is it possible to do this (the more general "optional extension" situation crops up in several places in my planned design) with one route? Or do I need to make two routes like this:

routes.MapRoute("News-ImplicitFormat",
                "news",
                new { controller = "News", action = "Browse", format = "" });

routes.MapRoute("News-ExplicitFormat",
                "news.{format}"
                new { controller = "News", action = "Browse" });

It seems like it would be useful to have the routing system support something like:

routes.MapRoute("News",
                "news(.{format})?",
                new { controller = "News", action = "Browse" });

Doug McClean · Accepted Answer · 2008-11-01 18:04:43Z

13

I made a method to support adding pairs like this as follows:

public static void MapRouteWithOptionalFormat(this RouteCollection routes,
                                              string name,
                                              string url,
                                              object defaults)
{
    Route implicitRoute = routes.MapRoute(name + "-ImplicitFormat",
                                          url,
                                          defaults);
    implicitRoute.Defaults.Add("format", string.Empty);

    Route explicitRoute = routes.MapRoute(name + "-ExplicitFormat",
                                          url + ".{format}",
                                          defaults);
}

answered Nov 1, 2008 at 18:04

Doug McClean

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1 Comment

ern Over a year ago

This works well, though I switched the order of the implicit and explicit routes, due to the explicit being more specifiable.

Haacked · Accepted Answer · 2008-11-03 21:54:11Z

0

You can look into using constraints to make this work with normal routes.

UPDATE: actually, I misread the question. The other answer is the correct thing to do for now. Or create a custom route. We're looking at the idea of optional segments as a possible future feature.

edited Nov 3, 2008 at 21:54

answered Nov 2, 2008 at 16:22

Haacked

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4 Comments

Doug McClean Over a year ago

Phil, what would I be looking to constrain? .Contains(".")? Could you outline this strategy briefly? Awesome work, by the way. Thanks!

fearofawhackplanet Over a year ago

Phil Haack getting downvoted on an MVC question, I bet that doesn't happen too often :)

Alxandr Over a year ago

I know this is 2-3 years old, but is this doable now? I was wondering if I can have /post/15 = html, /post/15.json = json api-data.

Alxandr Over a year ago

Oh, and I want them to go to different routes based on the ending, so that I can have API-controllers.

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