Question

I suspect I’m doing this wrong.

For various reasons, my app forces the user to make some choices right after login. In order to ensure that they enter the necessary data, I override the OnActionExecuting method in a base controller class to intercept any attempt at executing an action before this data has been entered, and redirect the user to the necessary page. I preserve the url of the action they were attempting to execute with the following code:

url = Url.RouteUrl("Default", filterContext.RouteData.Values);

(filterContext is an ActionExecutingContext object, and a parameter of OnActionExecuting.)

The problem I’m having is that, if the action was associated with a controller in an area, the url I get doesn’t reflect the area.

I understand from other posts that I can get the area name from the DataTokens collection of RouteData. But I’m uncertain of the best way to pass it. I suppose I could retrieve it and use the RouteValueDictionary.Add method to add it to RouteData.Values (assuming Values is not read-only at that point; I don’t know), but that feels a bit … odd, like somehow the point is being missed.

Is this really the way this is supposed to be done? Is there something wrong elsewhere, that Area is absent from my RouteData.Values?

Answer 1

I would just take it out of the data tokens in the filter and add it to route values. You can do it with RouteValues.Add:

if (filterContext.RouteData.DataTokens.ContainsKey("area"))
    filterContext.RouteData.Values.Add("area", 
        filterContext.RouteData.DataTokens["area"]);

The areas feature was added in MVC2, and I imagine this is a side effect of it not being in MVC1. However, as long as your RouteValues contains an “area” key, UrlHelper.RouteUrl should generate the correct URL for the area.