Question

I am altering an ASP.NET, MVC, C# application but a routes.MapRoute entry isn’t working as expected. In my Global.asax.cs file I have the following two routes –

routes.MapRoute(
            "MyRoute1", // Route name
            "{controller}/{action}/{something}/{name}/{id}/{myParameterA}", 
            new { controller = "MyController", action = "MyActionA", category = "something", name = "name", id = "id", myParameterA = "myParameterA" });


routes.MapRoute(
            "MyRoute2", // Route name
            "{controller}/{action}/{something}/{name}/{id}/{myParameterB}", 
            new { controller = "MyController", action = "MyActionB", category = "something", name = "name", id = "id", myParameterB = UrlParameter.Optional } );

The code in my controller looks like this –

    public ActionResult MyActionA(string something, string name, string id, string myParameterA)
    {
       //do cool stuff!
    }

    public ActionResult MyActionB(string something, string name, string id, string myParameterB)
    {
       //do awesome stuff!
    }

When I call MyActionB, the final parameter myParameterB is coming into the Controller as null even when the parameter is in the URL – (example: /MyController/MyActionB/aThing/aName/123/456).

I do want the final parameter (‘456’ in my above example) to be optional.

MyActionA is working fine.

Any suggestions would be appreciated!
Also, is there a good reference out there on how routes.MapRoute works?
Thank you!

Answer 1

This is because there is nothing to distinguish between those 2 routes once you replace the parameters with strings in the route itself. If you add a static part to the routes you should be able to differentiate between them.

routes.MapRoute(
        "MyRoute1", // Route name
        "{controller}/{action}/{something}/{name}/{id}/firstroute/{myParameterA}", 
        new { controller = "MyController", action = "MyActionA", category = "something", name = "name", id = "id", myParameterA = "myParameterA" });


routes.MapRoute(
        "MyRoute2", // Route name
        "{controller}/{action}/{something}/{name}/{id}/secondroute/{myParameterB}", 
        new { controller = "MyController", action = "MyActionB", category = "something", name = "name", id = "id", myParameterB = UrlParameter.Optional } );

See if that works.