Multiple Parameters MVC routing

Question

I am making a library-like website. In this library an article can have a category, and said category can have up to 2 parent categories, like: "World > Country > City".

I want to keep all the displaying of views to a single Controller for all articles, named LibraryController. And the 2 actions being used are Article(string id) and Category(string[] ids)

To view an article called "The Templar Order" the user must input: /library/article/the-templar-order

Alright, so now the categories. I have 2 approaches in my head, this example is to view the "City" category:

The simple approach: /library/world-country-city
The one I would like: /library/world/country/city
The one I do NOT want, as it becomes too clumsy: /library/category/world/country/city

But I am a bit confused as to how I would go about creating a route that takes 3 parameters and essentially no action. And except for the first parameter "world" the rest should be optional, like this: "/library/world/" > "/library/world/country/" > "/library/world/country/city/"

So how would I go about creating such a route ?

Solution

RouteConfig.cs

// GET library/article/{string id}
routes.MapRoute(
    name: "Articles",
    url: "Library/Article/{id}",
    defaults: new { controller = "Library", action = "Article", id = "" }
    );

// GET library/
routes.MapRoute(
    name: "LibraryIndex",
    url: "Library/",
    defaults: new { controller = "Library", action = "Index" }
    );

// GET library/category/category/category etc.
routes.MapRoute(
    name: "Category",
    url: "Library/{*categories}",
    defaults: new { controller = "Library", action = "Category" }
    );

Nkosi · Accepted Answer · 2016-11-24 19:15:44Z

1

You can achieve that with the following two routes.

// GET library/article/the-templar-order
routes.MapRoute(
     name: "Articles",
     url: "Library/Article/{id}",
     defaults: new { controller = "Library", action = "Article" }
 );

// GET library/world/country/city
routes.MapRoute(
     name: "Category",
     url: "Library/{*categories}",
     defaults: new { controller = "Library", action = "Category" }
 );

And a slight modification to the target action

public ActionResult Category(string categories) {
    categories = categories ?? string.Empty;
    var ids = categories.Split(new []{'/'}, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
    //...other code
}

answered Nov 24, 2016 at 19:15

Nkosi

249k38 gold badges472 silver badges506 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

4 Comments

Nikolaj Thorup Jensen Over a year ago

sry I was bit too quick at accepting the answer. I am receiving a "Resource not found" on anything besides /library/world/country/city. Meaning a url such as /library/world causes an error.

Nkosi Over a year ago

Show the order in which you mapped the routes. the order is important because first match wins. this probably means that another route is catching the url before it can be handled.

Nikolaj Thorup Jensen Over a year ago

thanks mate, updated the question with the final solution... Now it works perfectly... It was the ordering of the mapped routes that were indeed causing the issue...

Nkosi Over a year ago

Not a problem. Glad to help. Remember that specific routes need to be mapped before more general routes. Happy coding!!!

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Multiple Parameters MVC routing

1 Answer 1

4 Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

4 Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related