Question

I’m learning about creating custom routes in ASP.NET MVC and have hit a brick wall. In my Global.asax.cs file, I’ve added the following:

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

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

    // My Custom Route.
    routes.MapRoute(
        "User_Filter",
        "home/filter/{name}",
        new { controller = "Home", action = "Filter", name = String.Empty }
    );
}

The idea is for me to able to navigate to http://localhost:123/home/filter/mynameparam. Here is my controller:

public class HomeController : Controller
{
    public ActionResult Index()
    {
        return View();
    }

    public ActionResult Filter(string name)
    {
        return this.Content(String.Format("You found me {0}", name));
    }
}

When I navigate to http://localhost:123/home/filter/mynameparam the contoller method Filter is called, but the parameter name is always null.

Could someone give a pointer as to the correct way for me to build my custom route, so that it passes the name part in the url into the name parameter for Filter().

Answer 1

The Default route should be the last one.
Try it this way:

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

    // My Custom Route.
    routes.MapRoute(
        "User_Filter",
        "home/filter/{name}",
        new { controller = "Home", action = "Filter", name = String.Empty }
    );

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