CODEWITHSUNDEEP
asp.netasp.net-mvcasp.net-mvc-3
Michael
Michael

Reputation: 629

Calling Html.ActionLink with custom routes not working as expected in ASP.NET MVC 3

I have a Listings controller with an Index action that takes an optional category parameter...

public ActionResult Index(string category) { ... }

I have the standard default route in global.asax...

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

If I call...

@Html.ActionLink("Show All Listings", "Index", "Listings")

...from within a view (even a view for the same action with a category specified) I get a link to "/Listings".

If I call...

@Html.ActionLink("Show Listings for Category A", "Index", "Listings", new { category = "CategoryA" }, null)

...I get a link to "/Listings?category=CategoryA". All good so far.

So what I wanted to achieve is to create a custom route for when the category is specified. To do this I added a custom route to global.asax just before the above route as follows:

routes.MapRoute(
    "ListingCategories",
    "listings/category/{category}",
    new { controller = "Listings", action = "Index" }
);

Now if I call...

@Html.ActionLink("Show Listings for Category A", "Index", "Listings", new { category = "CategoryA" }, null)

...I get a nice link "/Listings/Category/CategoryA"

But here's the problem. If I call...

@Html.ActionLink("Show All Listings", "Index", "Listings")

...from the view for the above action with the category = "CategoryA", the link that is generated is "/Listings/Category/CategoryA" instead of just "/Listings". But when I make the same call from any other view the link is generated fine as "/Listings".

I've tried calling...

@Html.ActionLink("Show All Listings", "Index", "Listings", new { category = "" }, null)

...and it still generates the link as "/Listings/Category/CategoryA" when called from the view for the action that had category = "CategoryA". However if I set category to any non empty string, then it generates the link to the correct category (whatever I specify).

Is this expected behavior?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 3011

Answers (1)

Buildstarted
Buildstarted

Reputation: 26689

Modify your route so that category is optional

routes.MapRoute(
    "ListingCategories",
    "listings/category/{category}",
    new { controller = "Listings", action = "Index", category = UrlParameter.Optional }
);

Your previous route makes the category required so the ActionLink doesn't match that route but instead matches another route like the Default one.

Upvotes: 2

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