ASP.NET MVC : Ignore latter route elements in url for a form's action

Question

Hi,

I have a URL /products/search where Products is the controller and Search is the action. This url contains a search form whose action attribute is (and should always be) /products/search eg;

<%using( Html.BeginForm( "search", "products", FormMethod.Post))

This works ok until I introduce paging in the search results. For example if I search for "t" I get a paged list. So on page 2 my url looks like this :

/products/search/t/2

It shows page 2 of the result set for the search "t". The problem is that the form action is now also /products/search/t/2. I want the form to always post to /products/search.

My routes are :

routes.MapRoute( "Products search",
        "products/search/{query}/{page}",
        new { controller = "Products", action = "Search", query = "", page = 1 });

routes.MapRoute( "Default",
        "{controller}/{action}/{id}",
        new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = "" });

How can I force Html.BeginForm(), or more specifically Url.Action( "Search", "Products"), to ignore the /query/page in the url?

Thanks

Answer 1

The order is really important, the first route it hits that matches it uses. Therefore catch all type routes should be at the very end. Here is a helpful route debugger youc an use to figure out what the problem is.

Route Debugger

Answer 2

Fixed by adding another route where query and page are not in the url which is kind of counter intuitive because the more specific route is lower down the order

routes.MapRoute(
        "",
        "products/search",
        new { controller = "Products", action = "Search", query = "", page = 1 });

routes.MapRoute(
        "",
        "products/search/{query}/{page}",
        new { controller = "Products", action = "Search"} //, query = "", page = 1 });

routes.MapRoute(
        "Default",
        "{controller}/{action}/{id}",
        new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = "" });