Question

In an ASP MVC 3 project i want to enable language switching.

The routing is defined like this:

routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");

        routes.MapRoute(
             "DefaultWithLanguage", // Route name
             "{language}/{controller}/{id}/{slug}", // URL with parameters
             new { language = "en", controller = "Front", action = "Details", id = UrlParameter.Optional, slug = UrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults                 
         );

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

Trying to switch languages (in _Layout.cshtml) works like this:

<li>@Html.ActionLink("Spanish", ViewContext.RouteData.Values["action"].ToString(), ViewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"].ToString(), new { language = "es" })</li>    

Instead of getting a URL like the following (after having selected Spanish)

.../es/ControllerName/ActionName

i ‘m getting this:

.../ControllerName/ActionName?Length=11

If i set the ActionLink to the following (notice the last null parameter):

<li>@Html.ActionLink("Spanish", ViewContext.RouteData.Values["action"].ToString(), ViewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"].ToString(), new { language = "es" }, null)</li>

i get this:

 .../ControllerName/ActionName?language=es

What am i missing?
Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

There are some issues with your routes registration DefaultWithLanguage route registration. It doesn’t allow you to specify the {action}. This means that this route will only match a Details action (since you have specified it in the default values). Another issue is that you made the {id} parameter optional. But that’s impossible. Only the last parameter of a route can be optional. In your case it is followed by a {slug} parameter.

So one possibility is the following:

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

    routes.MapRoute(
        "DefaultWithLanguage",
        "{language}/{controller}/{action}/{id}",
        new 
        { 
            language = "en", 
            controller = "Front", 
            action = "Details", 
            id = UrlParameter.Optional 
        }
    );
}

and then:

@Html.ActionLink(
    "Spanish", 
    ViewContext.RouteData.GetRequiredString("action"), 
    ViewContext.RouteData.GetRequiredString("controller"),
    new { language = "es" },
    null
)

If you wanted to add a {slug} parameter then your {id} can no longer be optional:

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

    routes.MapRoute(
        "DefaultWithLanguage",
        "{language}/{controller}/{action}/{id}/{slug}",
        new 
        { 
            language = "en", 
            controller = "Front", 
            action = "Details", 
            slug = UrlParameter.Optional 
        }
    );
}

and then:

@Html.ActionLink(
    "Spanish", 
    ViewContext.RouteData.GetRequiredString("action"), 
    ViewContext.RouteData.GetRequiredString("controller"),
    new { 
        language = "es", 
        id = ViewContext.RouteData.GetRequiredString("id") 
    },
    null
)