Question

Here’s my default route:

routes.MapRouteLowercase(
                "Default",
                "{country}/{controller}/{action}/{id}",
                new {
                    country = "uk",
                    controller = "Home",
                    action = "Index",
                    id = UrlParameter.Optional
                },
                new[] { "Presentation.Controllers" }
                );

As we know, when someone visits http://www.domain.com/ MVC’s routing will determine the default controller and action to execute based upon the above route, but the URL will remain the same. Is there a built in or elegant way to perform a 301 redirect from http://www.domain.com/ to http://www.domain.com/uk/{controller}/{action}/ for every route that uses defaults?

Answer 1

I have created a custom route handler that does the redirect at the route level. Thanks to Phil Haack.

Here is the complete work.

Redirect route handler

public class RedirectRouteHandler : IRouteHandler
{
    private string _redirectUrl;

    public RedirectRouteHandler(string redirectUrl)
    {
        _redirectUrl = redirectUrl;
    }

    public IHttpHandler GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext)
    {
        if (_redirectUrl.StartsWith("~/"))
        {
            string virtualPath = _redirectUrl.Substring(2);
            Route route = new Route(virtualPath, null);
            var vpd = route.GetVirtualPath(requestContext,
                requestContext.RouteData.Values);
            if (vpd != null)
            {
                _redirectUrl = "~/" + vpd.VirtualPath;
            }
        }

        return new RedirectHandler(_redirectUrl, false);
    } 
}

Redirect http handler

public class RedirectHandler : IHttpHandler
{
    private readonly string _redirectUrl;

    public RedirectHandler(string redirectUrl, bool isReusable)
    {
        _redirectUrl = redirectUrl;
        IsReusable = isReusable;
    }

    public bool IsReusable { get; private set; }

    public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context)
    {
        context.Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently";
        context.Response.StatusCode = 301;
        context.Response.AddHeader("Location", _redirectUrl);
    }
}

Route extensions

public static class RouteExtensions
{
    public static void Redirect(this RouteCollection routes, string url, string redirectUrl)
    {
        routes.Add(new Route(url, new RedirectRouteHandler(redirectUrl)));
    }
}

Having all these, I can do something like this while mapping routes in Global.asax.cs.

routes.Redirect("", "/uk/Home/Index");

routes.Redirect("uk", "/uk/Home/Index");

routes.Redirect("uk/Home", "/uk/Home/Index");

.. other routes