Custom Routing Problems

Question

Wondering if I can get some opinions on how to handle routing for a web application I'm currently working on. Since it's a fairly complex app with many areas the default routing isn't quite cutting it. Here's the setup:

URL I'd like to have - /management/assets/course/edit/id

Currently, we have an area for management.

I'm having trouble understanding how to make /management/{controller}/{action}/{id} into /management/assets/{controller}/{action}/{id}

If there's better practices please let me know. I'm also looking into the new attribute routing in MVC5 as a solution.

Answer 1

AttributeRouting should be the way to go about it:

[RouteArea("management")]
[RoutePrefix("assets/course")]
public class AssetsCourseController : Controller
{
    [Route("edit/{id}")]
    public ActionResult Edit(string id) { ... }
}

This allows you much more control on your routes and simplifies custom routing greatly when you have deep hierarchies of routes.

To enable it, change this in RouteConfig.cs:

public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
{
    routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");

    // Setup attributing routing rules
    routes.MapMvcAttributeRoutes();

    // You can comment out the old routing if you don't need it, 
    // but it can work in hybrid mode without issues
    routes.MapRoute(
        name: "Default",
        url: "{controller}/{action}/{id}",
        defaults: new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional }
    );
}

You could leave in the old routing and have hybrid routes and only override with AttributeRouting when needed if you already have a working site and needs to keep it working.