Asp.Net Mvc Route problem

Question

Hello,

I have been testing a few options with Route Debugger but no luck. Let me describe what I am trying:

I have all routes "translated" as follows (I needed to translate from English to Portuguese and sometime simplify):

routes.MapRoute("Article.Create", "cms/artigo/criar",
                new { controller = "Article", action = "Create" });

Everything is working. Since I have all routes defined I think I don't need Default one. So I have something like:

// Other translation routes
routes.MapRoute("Article.Create", "cms/artigo/criar",
                new { controller = "Article", action = "Create" });
routes.MapRoute("Article.Edit", "cms/artigo/editar/{id}",
                new { controller = "Article", action = "Edit", id = "" });
routes.MapRoute("Home.Index", "inicio",
                new { controller = "Home", action = "Index" });
routes.MapRoute("Home.Contact", "contacto",
                new { controller = "Home", action = "Contact" });

// Error Unknown
routes.MapRoute("Error.Unknown", "erro",
                new { controller = "Error", action = "Unknown" });

// Start
routes.MapRoute("Start", "_Default.aspx",
                new { controller = "Home", action = "Index" });

// Error NotFound
routes.MapRoute("Catch.All", "{*path}",
                new { controller = "Error", action = "NotFound", path = "" });

If the root goes through the translation mapping with no match then if it is an Unknown Error displays only "http://domain.com/erro"
If not then try to match Home/Index.
Finally goes to catch all route and display only the path as follows "http://domain.com/the/invalid/path

On my Web.Config I have:

<customErrors mode="On" defaultRedirect="~/Error/Unknown">
  <error statusCode="404" redirect="~/Error/NotFound" />
</customErrors>

What happens is when I start my site it always goes to NotFound error and not to start page.

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

You have defined that the only URL, that points to your home page, is "~/yourapp/_Default.aspx", but your start url is ""~/yourapp/", which will correctly be intercepted by your Catch.All route. You must change your Start route to this:

MapRoute("Start", "", new { controller = "Home", action = "Index" });

Btw.: If you want to unit test your routes, you may be interested in this: Unit testing ASP.NET MVC routes. I presents a test fixture to test routes in a tabular style - ideal if you have many possible routes (sample code available).