Question

I am new to MVC3 and cannot move with this problem.
I am making a simple blog with posts, that are divided into categories and each post may have some tags.
If I show posts to user, I have paging there, where url is like localhost/Posts/1, where “1” is number of the page.
But how can I do this if I want to show posts only from some category or with some tag?
It is in format localhost/Posts/Categories/1, where “1” is id of the category or localhost/Posts/Tags/tag1 where “tag1” is particular tag
I would like to change it all to be in format localhost/Posts/Page/1 or localhost/Posts/Categories/1/Page/1 or localhost/Posts/Tags/tag1/Page/1, but I really cannot find out how to achieve this in controller.
So my question is: How to make methods in controller to accept these complex urls?

I guess it has something to do with routing, but couldn’t find any explanation of my problem.

Thanks a lot for any help.

My code:

public ActionResult Tags(string id)
{
  Tag tag = GetTag(id);
  ViewBag.IdUser = IDUser;
  if (IDUser != -1)
  {
    ViewBag.IsAdmin = IsAdmin;
    ViewBag.UserName = model.Users.Where(x => x.IDUser == IDUser).First().Name;
  }
  return View("Index", tag.Posts.OrderByDescending(x => x.DateTime));
}

public ActionResult Index(int? id)
{
  int pageNumber = id ?? 0;
  IEnumerable<Post> posts =
            (from post in model.Posts
             where post.DateTime < DateTime.Now
             orderby post.DateTime descending
             select post).Skip(pageNumber * PostsPerPage).Take(PostsPerPage + 1);
  ViewBag.IsPreviousLinkVisible = pageNumber > 0;
  ViewBag.IsNextLinkVisible = posts.Count() > PostsPerPage;
  ViewBag.PageNumber = pageNumber;
  ViewBag.IdUser = IDUser;
  if (IDUser != -1)
  {
    ViewBag.IsAdmin = IsAdmin;
    ViewBag.UserName = model.Users.Where(x => x.IDUser == IDUser).First().Name;
  }
  return View(posts.Take(PostsPerPage));
  }

Answer 1

Create new routes to direct those URL patterns to your controller (or another contoller, as appropriate)

http://www.asp.net/mvc/tutorials/older-versions/controllers-and-routing/asp-net-mvc-routing-overview-cs

For example, this route definition

   routes.MapRoute(
                "CategoryPage",                                              // Route name
                "Posts/Categories/{CategoryID}/Page/{PageID}",                           // URL with parameters
                new { controller = "Home", action = "ViewPage", CategoryID = "", PageID="" }  // Parameter defaults
            );

Would be picked up by this action in the HomeController:

public ActionResult ViewPage(int CategoryID, int PageID)