Question

I want a Route with two optional args; I thought the following would work:

routes.MapRoute(
    "ProductForm",
    "products/{action}/{vendor_id}_{category_id}",
    new { controller = "Products", action = "Index", vendor_id = "", category_id = "" },
    new { action = @"Create|Edit" }
);

But it only works when both vendor_id and category_id are provided; using RouteDebug I see that /products/create/_3 doesn’t trigger my route, so I added other two routes:

routes.MapRoute(
    "ProductForm1",
    "{controller}/{action}/_{category_id}",
    new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", category_id = "" },
    new { controller = "Products", action = @"Create|Edit" }
);

routes.MapRoute(
    "ProductForm2",
    "{controller}/{action}/{vendor_id}_",
    new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", vendor_id = "" },
    new { controller = "Products", action = @"Create|Edit" }
);

So, the questions:

• Is using three routes the only way to make a route with optional args?

• Are these URLs ok or not, that is, would you suggest a better way to do this?

Answer 1

Why don’t you try to give vendor_id a default value (if it is not specified i.e 0) that would help you get away with one route

routes.MapRoute("ProductForm","products/{action}/{vendor_id}_{category_id}",
new { controller = "Products", action = "Index", vendor_id = "0", category_id = "" },   
new { action = @"Create|Edit" });