ASP.NET MVC Routing for files with muliple sub-directories

Question

I need to setup a file handler to route with multiple sub directories something like tihs;

http://localhost/images/7/99/786936215595.jpg

I tried putting this in the global.asax file;

 routes.Add(
   "ImageRoute",
   new Route("covers/{filepath}/{filename}",
   new ImageRouteHandler()));

I am using the ImageHandler found in this Question, which works great if you have a single sub-directory (ie '/images/15/786936215595.jpg') but fails when you have multiple directories.

I tried setting up a wildcard and that didnt work (ie 'new Route("covers/{filepath}/*/{filename}"')

This is serving images from a large NAS (think something like 3 million images) so its not like I can just move files around.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Can't you treat the entire path as one route parameter? Like so:

routes.Add(
    "ImageRoute",
    "/images/{path}",
    new { controller = "Image", action = "Image" }
);

And then access the entire path in the ActionResult Image(string path) { } action method?

Answer 2

Ok after much playing around and google fu I found how to make it work.

Change the route definition like this;

 routes.Add(
     "ImageRoute",
     new Route("images/{*filepath}",
     new ImageRouteHandler()));

Then put this after the default MapRoute. The important part is the "*" before the filepath, tells MVC to send anything following this as part of the filepath RouteData. So in the GetHttpHandler() method I can get the full path by using this;

string fp = requestContext.RouteData.Values["filepath"] as string;

Woot!