Question

I have a need for some dynamic routing. So my routes would look like this:

{UserName}
{UserName}/Edit/{id}
{UserName}/Delete/{id}

Where the users would be routed to the user controller. But I still want to maintain routes to controls like:

{Controller}/Edit/{id}
{Controller}/Delete/{id}

So basically I want it to direct to the physical controller say called OrdersController for edit delete but if someone navigates to /jdoe/ it sends it to the user controller.

How do I do this in my routes?

Answer 1

You need to create multiple routes, and keep them in the appropriate order

// one route for Users
routes.MapRoute("Users",
     "{username}/{action}/{id}",
     new { controller = "Users", action = "Index", username = string.Empty, id = UrlParameter.Optional },
     new { id = @"\d+" }
);
// one route for everything else
routes.MapRoute("Default",
     "{controller}/{action}/{id}",
     new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional},
     new { id = @"\d+" }
);

It’s not “really” as easy as above, but that’s the jist of it. You would need too add a RouteConstraint to validate usernames.

Lastly, if you’re using the username parameter, then why do you need the id? Just a thought.

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Aside:
If you look at the user section here on StackOverflow, you’ll see the routing look more like this.

• users/{id}/{username}
• users/{id}/edit
• users/{id}/delete

I would personally say that this is a lot less work to achieve… but hey, that’s just me.