Question

ASP.NET MVC 3 Routing confuses me. I feel like I’ve read everything I can, but sometimes, I still just don’t get it. I am trying to create a URL that I can visit that looks like

/authorized/home/children/{childID}

I want that URL to show an HTML view that loads the contents for a specific child. My view is defined as follows:

/Views/Authorized/Home/Children/Child.cshtml

In my global.asax.cs file, I have added the following route:

  routes.MapRoute(
    "Child", // Route name
    "{controller}/Home/Children/{action}/{id}",
    new { controller = "Authorized", action = "Child", id = UrlParameter.Optional }
  );

In AuthorizedController.cs, I have the following:

public ActionResult Child(string id)
{
  return View("~/Views/Authorized/Home/Children/Child.cshtml");
}

If I visit /authorized/home/children, I see the contents of Child.cshtml. However, if I visit /authorized/home/children/1, I get a 404.

What am I doing wrong? Thank you

Answer 1

The route you shared does not match the route you’re saying you’re wanting.

You want:

/authorized/home/children/{childID}

But, you’re route is expecting:

/Authorized/Home/Children/{action}/{id}

Note the additional action parameter there. Is children your action in your controller, or is it child? If it’s children you should update your route to this:

 routes.MapRoute(
    "Child", // Route name
    "{controller}/Home/{action}/{id}",
    new { controller = "Authorized", action = "Children", id = UrlParameter.Optional }
  );

However, if it’s Child you’ll need to remove the {action} from your route like this:

 routes.MapRoute(
    "Child", // Route name
    "{controller}/Home/Children/{id}",
    new { controller = "Authorized", action = "Child", id = UrlParameter.Optional }
  );

This will make an explicit route, directing to the Child action.