Determine which portal to route to in a multi-tenant MVC website

Question

Hello,

I am working on a simple MVC2 multi-tenant application. My question is how do I determine which tenant portal has been asked for in the url by the user? What I need to have happen is this:

• A request to http://localhost should go to the standard Home controller’s index page
• A request to http://localhost/client1 should go to the ClientPortalHome controller’s index page
• A request to http://localhost/client1/LogOn will go to the client specific logon page

The two routes below achieve this and seem to work fine.

routes.MapRoute(
    "Client Portal Default", // Route name
    "{clientportal}/{controller}/{action}/{id}", // URL with parameters
    new { controller = "ClientPortalHome", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults
);

routes.MapRoute(
    "Default", // Route name
    "{controller}/{action}/{id}", // URL with parameters
    new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults,
);

My question is how do I determine which client portal has been asked for (client1 in the above example)?

I tried using this:

private void Application_BeginRequest(Object source, EventArgs e)
{
    var route = RouteTable.Routes.GetRouteData(new HttpContextWrapper(Context));
    var currentPortal = route.GetRequiredString("clientportal");

    Context.Items.Add("ClientPortalName", currentPortal);
}

The problem is that it is called for all routes and throws an exception for the Home controller case because the route does not contain a “clientportal” entry.

What’s the best way to determine which portal has been requested so I can make sure it exists and show the client specific home page? Do I need a custom route handler?

Thank you in advance.

Rick

Answer 1

This should work:

private void Application_BeginRequest(Object source, EventArgs e)
{
    var route = RouteTable.Routes.GetRouteData(new HttpContextWrapper(Context));

    object currentPortal;
    if(route.Values.TryGetValue("clientportal", out currentPortal))
    {
        Context.Items.Add("ClientPortalName", currentPortal);
    }
}

Answer 2

What do you guys think about about a route handler? What are the pros and cons of this approach vs. Application_BeginRequest?

public class PortalRouteHandler : IRouteHandler
{
    public IHttpHandler GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext)
    {
        var portalName = requestContext.RouteData.GetRequiredString("clientportal");
        if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(portalName))
        {
            // Grab the portal details from the database
            var portalEntity =
                Repository.For<ClientPortalEntity>().GetAll().Where(x => x.PortalTag == portalName).First();
            if (portalEntity != null)
            {
                // Register db object for use by controllers
                IoC.Container.RegisterInstance<ClientPortalEntity>(portalEntity);
            }
        }

        // Return the default MVC HTTP handler for the configured request
        return new MvcHandler(requestContext);
    }
}