MVC4 Url Routing

Question

I am having following table in my database.

Userid   username              usercity
1        amit                  mumbai
2        vishal                ahmedabad 
3        shekhar               indore
4        nitin                 bhopal
5        dhanraj               jaipur   

I already created viewmodel & controller and displayed this using DBML.
http://example.com/Home/UserList
but when i click on details link, url structure as follows:
http://example.com/mymvc1/home/details/5

5 is the ID.

I don't want to pass Id, I want to pass username

Id should be automatically converted into username.

How can I achieve this?

Answer 1

Add {username} to route instead of id kinda like:

routes.MapRoute("ViewUser", "Somepath/View/{username}",
                    new { controller = "Users", action = "View" }
                );

and then in your listning use like

@Html.ActionLink("View User", "View", new { username = item.Username })

And then in your controller have:

public ActionResult View(string username)

UPDATE:

Note that the above is only a good idea if username is unique. Else you can do username as an optional parameter so you get the name in the url.

Like this:

routes.MapRoute("ViewUser", "Somepath/View/{userID}/{username}",
 new { controller = "Users", action = "View", username = UrlParameter.Optional },
 new { userID = @"\d+" } 
  );

And then user

@Html.ActionLink("View User", "View", new { userID = item.UserID, username = item.Username })

And back to int userID in the controller