Question

I know this has been asked before but I’m really struggling with the concept of route configs in MVC – specifically removing controller names and/or action names from a URL.

On my webpage, I have a partial view called “Sidebar”, which uses its own controller (SidebarController).

Within the sidebar’s partial view, I have the following ActionLink:

@Html.ActionLink("December-2012", "Archive", new { id = "December-2012" })

When the link is built, the URL reads as

http://localhost/Sidebar/Archive/December-2012

My problem is having the “Sidebar” part appearing in the URL – this controller isn’t technically used for any navigation; it’s just used to build the partial view. Instead, I want the URL to read:

http://localhost/Archive/December-2012

I tried specifying the controller on the ActionLink, but this just results in

http://localhost/Archive/Archive/December-2012

Could somebody please explain (in simpleton terms) how I configure a route so that when /Archive is put on the end of the URL, it knows to call the ArchiveController with (let’s say) the Index(id) action?

Thanks in advance, and apologies for asking a question that’s been covered before – as I said I’m just really struggling with the whole concept of route maps.

Answer 1

Not entire sure what your doing wrong here. Perhaps also include the code for the second url.

You could use this overload of the Html.ActionLink method:

public static MvcHtmlString ActionLink(
    this HtmlHelper htmlHelper,
    string linkText,
    string actionName,
    string controllerName,
    Object routeValues,
    Object htmlAttributes
)

You would use it like this:

@Html.ActionLink("December-2012(ThisIsLinkText)", "Index", "Archive", 
                 new { id = "December-2012"}, null);

Which will produce the following url:

http://localhost/Archive/Index/December-2012

Update:

Based on your comment you need this route above your default route:

routes.MapRoute(
    "ArchiveRoute", 
    "Archive/{id}", 
    new { controller = "Archive", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional } 
);

And the same action link should map to this url:

@Html.ActionLink("December-2012(ThisIsLinkText)", "Index", "Archive", 
                 new { id = "December-2012"}, null);

Remember the route has to be above the Default route.

This url should then work:

http://localhost/Archive/December-2012