Custom a catch-all parameter in routing

Question

Hi Geeks,

I recently want to have a special routing rule : {*whatever}/details/{Id}/{itemName}

I know an exception will be thrown once I run the application. In my application, for example my url pattern is www.domain.com/root/parent/child/.../child/details/30/itemname

but the current routing doesnot support this. How can custom the routing handler to make it work?

Answer 1

The problem is... how will it know when to stop?

the {*whatever} segment will match:

/foo/
/foo/bar
/foo/bar/details/4/moreFoo
/foo/bar/andmore/details/4/moreFoo

Because the catch-all parameter includes anything, it will never stop.

The only way to implement this would be to create a different route for each place you use details...

eg:

games/details/{id}/{itemName}
widgets/details/{id}/{itemName}
books/details/{id}/{itemName}

Of course, that is already provided in the default {controller}/{action}/{id} route

Answer 2

I think you may want to look at extending the System.Web.Routing.RouteBase class and override the GetRouteData() method. With it you can look at the requested url and decide if matches your pattern and if so construct and return a new instance of RouteData that points to the controller and action that you want to handle the request. Otherwise if you don't match the requested url you return null.

See the following for examples:

Pro ASP.NET MVC Framework By Steve Sanderson

Custom RouteBase