ASP.NET MVC: routing help

Question

Consider two methods on the controller CustomerController.cs:

//URL to be http://mysite/Customer/
public ActionResult Index()
{
    return View("ListCustomers");
}

//URL to be http://mysite/Customer/8
public ActionResult View(int id)
{
    return View("ViewCustomer");
}

• How would you setup your routes to accommodate this requirement?
• How would you use Html.ActionLink when creating a link to the View page?

Answer 1

In global.asax.cs, add following (suppose you use the default mvc visual studio template)

Route.MapRoute("Customer",
    "Customer/{id}",
    new { Controller = "CustomerController", action="View", id="" });

Make sure you put this route before the default route in the template

You then need to modify your controller. For the view,

public ActionResult View(int? id)
{
    if (id == null) 
    {
        return RedirectToAction("Index"); // So that it will list all the customer
    }
    //...The rest follows
}

For your second question, ActionLink is simple.

Html.ActionLink("Link Text", "View", "Customer", new {id=1}, null);