Question

I have functionality on my site to create/edit/delete pages for the front end. Here’s my controller:

namespace MySite.Controllers
{
    public class ContentPagesController : Controller
    {
        readonly IContentPagesRepository _contentPagesRepository;

        public ContentPagesController()
        {
            MyDBEntities entities = new MyDBEntities();
            _contentPagesRepository = new SqlContentPagesRepository(entities);
        }


        public ActionResult Index(string name)
        {
            var contentPage = _contentPagesRepository.GetContentPage(name);

            if (contentPage != null)
            {
                return View(new ContentPageViewModel
                {
                    ContentPageId = contentPage.ContentPageID,
                    Name = contentPage.Name,
                    Title = contentPage.Title,
                    Content = contentPage.Content
                });
            }

            throw new HttpException(404, "");
        }
    }
}

And in my global.asax:

public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
{
    routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");

    routes.MapRoute(
        "Page", // Route name
        "Page/{name}", // URL with parameters
        new { controller = "ContentPages", action = "Index" }, // Parameter defaults
        new[] { "MySite.Controllers" }
    );

    routes.MapRoute(
        "Default", // Route name
        "{controller}/{action}/{id}", // URL with parameters
        new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional }, // Parameter defaults
        new[] { "MySite.Controllers" }
    );
}

So I have a dynamic page in my database, named About. If I go to mysite.com/Page/About, I can view the dynamic content.

I want to create an ActionLink to this page. I’ve tried it like this:

@Html.ActionLink("About Us", "Index", "ContentPages", new { name = "About" })

But when I look at the link on the page, the url just goes to the current page with Length=12 in the query string. For instance, if I’m on the homepage, the link goes to mysite.com/Home?Length=12

What am I doing wrong here?

Answer 1

You are not using the correct ActionLink overload. Try like this:

@Html.ActionLink(
    "About Us",                // linkText
    "Index",                   // action
    "ContentPages",            // controller
    new { name = "About" },    // routeValues
    null                       // htmlAttributes
)

whereas in your example:

@Html.ActionLink(
    "About Us",                // linkText
    "Index",                   // action
    "ContentPages",            // routeValues
    new { name = "About" }    // htmlAttributes
)

which pretty obviously explains why your doesn’t generate the expected link.