Optional URL parameters with url routing in webforms

Question

Playing with the new(ish) url rewriting functionality for web forms, but I'm running into trouble trying to declare parameters as optional.

Here's the scenario. I've got a search function which accepts two parameters, sku and name. Ideally I'd like the URL for this search function to be /products/search/skuSearchString/nameSearchString. I also have various management pages that need to map to things like /products/management/ or /products/summary/. In other words, the last two parameters in the URL need to be optional - there might be one search string, or two, or none.

This is how I've declared my virtual URL:

Friend Const _VIRTUALURL As String = "products/{action}/{sku}/{*product}"

And added the following defaults:

    Me.Defaults = New Web.Routing.RouteValueDictionary(New With {.sku = "/"})
    Me.Defaults = New Web.Routing.RouteValueDictionary(New With {.product = "/"})

I have two problems with this setup. The most pressing is that the url seems to expect an sku parameter. So, /products/summary/ cannot be found but /products/summary/anyTextAtAll/ maps to the correct page. You get the same result whether the defaults are set to "/" or "". How do I ensure both sku and product parameters are optional?

The second is more a matter of interest. Ideally, I'd like the url to be able to tell whether or not it's got a product search string or a url search string. The obvious way to do this is to make one or the other default to a value I can just pick up and ignore, but is there a neater way of handling it?

Answer 1

I'm not sure I entirely understood the question, but I have some comments about what you've shown so far:

The manner in which you're setting defaults seems incorrect. You're first setting a default value dictionary with a value for "sku". You're then replacing the default value dictionary with a value for "product".

A default value of "/" is unlikely to be what you want. In this case it sounds like you want a default value of just "" (empty string).

Try something like:

Me.Defaults = New Web.Routing.RouteValueDictionary(New With {
    .sku = "",
    .product = "" }) 

My VB skills are rather weak, so the syntax I showed might not be exactly right.

I think that if you change both of these then you should be good to go.