Question

I have the following routes set up:

        context.MapRoute(
            "content_article",
            "A{rk}/{title}",
            new { controller = "Server", action = "Article" },
            new { rk = @"^[\dA-Z]{3}$" }
        );

        context.MapRoute(
            "content_contentBlock",
            "C{rk}/{title}",
            new { controller = "Server", action = "ContentBlock" },
            new { rk = @"^[\dA-Z]{3}$" }
        );

        context.MapRoute(
            "content_favoritesList",
            "F{rk}/{title}",
            new { controller = "Server", action = "FavoritesList" },
            new { rk = @"^[\dA-Z]{3}$" }
        );

Is there a way that I could combine:

"A{rk}/{title}",
"C{rk}/{title}",
"F{rk}/{title}",

into one single route with an action of Index that’s taken if the URL starts with an A, C or F?

Answer 1

So if I understand correctly you want just one route to cover all three and to point to Index action? If that’s the question than the answer is

Sure you can

You just have to change your regular expression a little to this route definition:

context.MapRoute(
    "content",
    "{lrk}/{title}",
    new { controller = "Server", action = "Index" },
    new { lrk = @"^[ACF][0-9A-Z]{3}$" }
);

And that’s it. Parsing of the first letter out is then done by Index action that would likely (and hopefully) execute an appropriate separate method.

public ActionResult Index(string lrk)
{
    if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(lrk))
    {
        throw new ArgumentException("lrk")
    }
    char first = lrk[0];
    switch(first)
    {
        case 'A':
            return GetArticle(lrk.Substring(1));
        case 'C':
            return GetContent(lrk.Substring(1));
        case 'F':
            return GetFavorites(lrk.Substring(1));
        default:
            return View();
    }
}

private ActionResult GetArticle(string rk)
{
    ...
}

// and other couple

As you can see the three methods have the same signature as if they were controller actions, but they’re not, since they’re private. You can either set them as private or decorathe them with NonActionAttribute so they can’t get picked up by your default route, that you likely have as well…