Question

For a scenario, I have a ASP.NET MVC application with URLs that look like the following:

http://example.com/Customer/List
http://example.com/Customer/List/Page/2
http://example.com/Customer/List
http://example.com/Customer/View/8372
http://example.com/Customer/Search/foo/Page/5

These URLs are achieved with following routes in Global.asax.cs

routes.MapRoute(
    "CustomerSearch"
    , "Customer/Search/{query}/Page/{page}"
    , new { controller = "Customer", action = "Search" }
);

routes.MapRoute(
    "CustomerGeneric"
    , "Customer/{action}/{id}/Page/{page}"
    , new { controller = "Customer" }
);

//-- Default Route
routes.MapRoute(
    "Default",
    "{controller}/{action}/{id}",
    new { controller = "Customer", action = "Index", id = "" }
);

These all have gone well until a new requirement arrived and wants to drop keyword ‘Customer’ off the URL, to make the URLs look like:

http://example.com/List
http://example.com/List/Page/2
http://example.com/List
http://example.com/View/8372
http://example.com/Search/foo/Page/5

Edit: corrected example links, thanks to @haacked.

I tried to add new MapRoutes to take {action} only and have default controller set to Customer. eg/

routes.MapRoute(
    "CustomerFoo"
    , "{action}"
    , new { controller = "Customer", action = "Index" }
);

This seems to work, however now all links generated by Html.ActionLink() are weird and no longer URL friendly.

So, is this achievable? Am I approaching in the right direction?

Answer 1

don’t mix a rule like: "{action}/{id}" with one that’s "{controller}/{action}/{id}" … specially when id in the later has a default value i.e. is optional.

In that case you have nothing that allows routing to know which one is the right one to use.

A workaround, if that’s what you need, would be to add a constrain (see this) to the action in the earlier to a set of values i.e. List, View. Of course that with these types of rules, you can’t have a controller with the same name of an action.

Also remember that if you specify a default action & id in the "{action}/{id}" rule, that will be used when you hit the route of your site.