Question

Having this

routes.MapRoute(
    "ShowPage",
    "default.aspx/{page}/{pagetype}",
    new {
        controller = "Info",
        action = "PageASPX",
        page = "emptypage",
        pagetype = "emptypagetype"
    }
);

To catch default.aspx?page=order
(I need to generate a permanet redirect fom the old site to my new MVC site)

The route is matched as I can see in route debugger, but I don’t get any values in the route

Key          Value
page         emptypage 
pagetype     emptypagetype 
controller   Info 
action       PageASPX 

What’s wrong??

Answer 1

MVC route definitions have URL segments. Your route looks like this:

default.aspx/{page}/{pagetype}

this means that requests like default.aspx/order should populate page value during route resolution because it’s provided as a URL segment. This doesn’t mean that page won’t get populated later on when model binding occurs and your controller action gets invoked.

If your controller action signature seems similar to this:

public ActionResult PageASPX(string page, string pagetype)
{
    ...
}

Those two parameters may still get populated even when you’d provide them as query variables and not URL segments. The only requirement is that routing doesn’t provide default values for missing segment values (or they’re set as optional). Default MVC model binder will then populate page action parameter with actual query variable value.

So the main thing is that you should change your routing definition (see last section of my answer).

Requests that should work

In order for your routing to recognise page and pagetype URL segment variables your requests should look like this:

default.aspx/somepage
default.aspx/somepage/sometype

Provided that your routing doesn’t define defaults for page and pagetype then your controller actions will get page and pagetype parameters populated with correct values when your requests look like:

default.aspx/somepage
default.aspx/somepage/sometype
default.aspx?page=somepage
default.aspx?pagetype=sometype
default.aspx?page=somepage&pagetype=sometype

Mixing route values and query string variables

As my tests show Asp.net MVC doesn’t provide route value overriding when it has a value (either provided in the URL itself as segment or as route defaults). In your case if you’d request this URL:

default.aspx/routepage?page=querypage

your action method would see page parameter to have value of routepage. Always.

The more important aspect of this is that when you provide default value in route definition itself, you won’t be able to set it as a query string at all even when you omit it from the URL. To avoid this issue, you have two choices:

1. set page and pagetype as UrlParameter.Optional which will allow you to override their values with query string variables when URL won’t have them – this means that you can always use only URL segments or query strings, but not both, because URL segments prevails

2. have different names for URL segment variables and query string variables – the downside is that you’d need to have your action with double parameters which is undesired:

   public ActionResult PageASPX(string routePage, string routeType, string queryPage, string queryType)
   {
       string page = routePage ?? queryPage ?? string.Empty;
       string type = routeType ?? queryType ?? string.Emtpy;
       ...
   }
   

Best solution

Change your routing so you have separate routing definition for variables provided as URL segments and another for variables provided as query string variables. Then wire these routes to the same controller action as long as all variables (in segments and query string) share the same names:

route.MapRoute(
    "InSegmentsBoth",
    "default.aspx/{page}/{pagetype}",
    new { controller = "Info", action = "PageASPX" }
);
route.MapRoute(
    "InSegmentsPage",
    "default.aspx/{page}",
    new { controller = Info"", action = "PageASPX" }
);
route.MapRoute(
    "InQueryString",
    "default.aspx",
    new { controller = "Info", action = "PageASPX" }
);

If your requests provide both values (segments and query variables) as in

default.aspx/segmentpage?page=querypage

then segment values have precedence so action parameter page will have value of segmentpage for this request.