Question

Does anybody know how I use asp.net mvc routing to force any non ajax request matching controller/action/id to always respond with the home index view?

I am developing a Backbone.js applciation and trying to use pushstate therefore I do not have the hashfragment. The issue I am having is with bookmarked url’s such as a paged grid /CustomerDirectory/1 responds with the json – I need to respond with the index view then for backbone to take over and initiate the grid using the urland request the json for the grid?

Answer 1

A global action filter springs to mind:

public class MyFilter : ActionFilterAttribute
{
    public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)
    {
        if (!filterContext.HttpContext.Request.IsAjaxRequest())
        {
            var rd = filterContext.RequestContext.RouteData;
            var controller = rd.GetRequiredString("controller");
            var action = rd.GetRequiredString("action");
            var id = rd.Values["id"];
            if (DoYourTest())
            {
                // Short-circuit the execution of the request action
                // by setting the result which in this case will be
                // a ViewResult to render the Home/Index view
                filterContext.Result = new ViewResult
                {
                    ViewName = "~/Views/Home/Index.cshtml"
                };
            }
        }
    }
}

which will be registered in Global.asax:

public static void RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilterCollection filters)
{
    filters.Add(new MyFilter());
    ...
}