How to change controller using an action link, move to root of website

Question

I'm currently trying to user actionlink helpers in a way that I don't think was described in NerdDinner.

Lets say I am on this page

/Dinners/

and on that page there is a list of dinners, ok fine and working

now lets say I want to goto a new section of the site, which I have created a new controller MenuItemsController

so lets say I want to goto a new part of the website that manages menu items.

So going to

/menuitems/3

would bring up all the menu items assoicated with dinner id 3.

This is also working.

I am having trouble, linking to each of the menu item pages, because when I use the actionlink code, without much modification i get this

dinner1 = link /dinners/menuitems/3

rather than

dinner = link /menuitems/3

The actionlink code i am trying is

<%= Html.ActionLink("Menu Items", "/menuitems", new { id=item.id })%>

you can see the / there. This feels wrong.

I wasn't sure if this post was talking about the same problem or not.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1284885/how-do-i-have-links-to-root-controllers-in-site-master-in-asp-net-mvc

Are action links the completely wrong thing for me to be using here, becuase they are binded directly to the controller I am currently inside of?

If so, what would be the best method for me to achieve what I am trying to do, and also add further complexity like linking to create/edit/delete methods?

Answer 1

I oddly after much searching all day just found this page,

http://devlicio.us/blogs/derik%5Fwhittaker/archive/2008/03/06/link-building-101-with-asp-net-mvc.aspx

it seems like method 3 may be what I need, I'll try it when I get home.

Answer 2

Just get rid of the slash and specify the controller and action explicitly:

<%= Html.ActionLink("Menu Items", "Item", "menuitems", 
    new RouteValueDictionary { { "id", item.id } })%>

You don't give an action name in your examples, so I guessed "Item." Insert the correct action name, obviously.

The current controller name is used if you use one of the ActionLink overloads which don't take a controller name.

I've written an in-depth explanation of routing, ActionLink, and more.