CODEWITHSUNDEEP
asp.net-mvc
Doug McClean
Doug McClean

Reputation: 14495

ASP.NET MVC Routes with "File Extensions"

I want to make an MVC route for a list of news, which can be served in several formats.

Is it possible to do this (the more general "optional extension" situation crops up in several places in my planned design) with one route? Or do I need to make two routes like this:

routes.MapRoute("News-ImplicitFormat",
                "news",
                new { controller = "News", action = "Browse", format = "" });

routes.MapRoute("News-ExplicitFormat",
                "news.{format}"
                new { controller = "News", action = "Browse" });

It seems like it would be useful to have the routing system support something like:

routes.MapRoute("News",
                "news(.{format})?",
                new { controller = "News", action = "Browse" });

Upvotes: 12

Views: 5597

Answers (2)

Haacked
Haacked

Reputation: 59061

You can look into using constraints to make this work with normal routes.

UPDATE: actually, I misread the question. The other answer is the correct thing to do for now. Or create a custom route. We're looking at the idea of optional segments as a possible future feature.

Upvotes: 0

Doug McClean
Doug McClean

Reputation: 14495

I made a method to support adding pairs like this as follows:

public static void MapRouteWithOptionalFormat(this RouteCollection routes,
                                              string name,
                                              string url,
                                              object defaults)
{
    Route implicitRoute = routes.MapRoute(name + "-ImplicitFormat",
                                          url,
                                          defaults);
    implicitRoute.Defaults.Add("format", string.Empty);

    Route explicitRoute = routes.MapRoute(name + "-ExplicitFormat",
                                          url + ".{format}",
                                          defaults);
}

Upvotes: 13

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