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asp.net MVC and RESTful routing, rails-style. Is it possible?

Answer 1

+4 A:

Sure:

routes.MapRoute("IwannaBeLikeTheCoolRailsKids",
                "bands/{bandName}/albums/{albumName}/tracks/{trackNumber}",
                new { controller = "Bands",
                action = "ByTrack" 
               });

Then in your controller:

public ActionResult ByTrack(string bandName, string albumName, int trackNumber)

Easy peasie.

Wyatt Barnett 2009-11-03 18:17:59

Man, you wrote alb**l**um all over the place! :)

Martinho Fernandes 2009-11-03 18:21:53

Nice touch with IWannaBeLikeTheCoolRailsKids...

Martinho Fernandes 2009-11-03 18:22:33

How would you handle this url? /bands/metallica/albums/killemall/track/the-four-horsemen

mxmissile 2009-11-03 18:25:05

without losing the int track url functionality

mxmissile 2009-11-03 18:25:47

Spelling wasn't my strong suit. As for the second part, there isn't a way to remove the track number from the URL and still use it as a parameter. Rather, what you'd need to do is make it so you could find the song by a url slug field.

Wyatt Barnett 2009-11-03 18:39:57

Like this? /bands/metallica/albums/killemall/track/4/the-four-horsemenWhat would the method signature look like for that?

mxmissile 2009-11-03 18:44:19

Maybe you want to ask your own question . . .

Wyatt Barnett 2009-11-03 19:38:43

So you think that there's no merit in the approach implemented by Steve Hodgkiss? Any kind of RESTful route can be handled by adding more specific routes to the default MVC routing engine?

thanos panousis 2009-11-04 07:21:00

Nah, I think it is a great approach in some cases, was really answering the question about how to do custom routing in general in .NET MVC.

Wyatt Barnett 2009-11-05 01:21:15

The problem with this approach is what do you do when the entities themselves are not hierarchical. Meaning that the track number is really a unique key for a song in the database.what do you do if the user changes the url to a different album name and what not, but keeps the last ID of the song the same? do you serve the song-detail page, or do you show a 404?And how do you handle that in your controllers in a general fashion?

thanos panousis 2009-12-02 18:25:11

My thought is anyone who manually changes the url to try and find a result deserves a 404 if the there is nothing there. Why write several hours of extra code to accommodate someone who is too lazy to go through your UI to find what they are looking for. I agree, url's need to be user friendly, but don't break your back thinking and coding routes for someone who is tinkering with your urls outside of the UI.

DM 2009-12-11 23:40:18

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asp.net MVC and RESTful routing, rails-style. Is it possible?

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