Question

In my page I ve to pass multiple values to controller.

My URL looks something like :
http://blah/Search/Page/?type=new&keywords=blahblah&sortType=Date

Is Passing multiple values as query string good practice in MVC ? or We can have slash separated URL, by using introducing custom routing?

NB: Lets consider all the values in my query string, are not secure / sensitive data.

Answer 1

I wouldn’t consider it a bad practice, as long as it’s not senstive data. It just depends if you want to write a custom route in your global.asax to handle it or not. The custom routes provide a cleaner url forsure. Also, for more savy users if they understand the concept on your site, it’s more intuitive.

So consider this:

http://baseballcards/topps/1980      // search for baseball cards made by topps in the 1980s
http://recipes/deserts/pies         // search for a desert recipe that are pies  
http://code/csharpe/linq             // search for csharp code that has linq examples

In these examples we can almost read the url like a sentence, making it more intuitive, giving a user the ability to plug and play. It clearly denotes the query almost like a breadcrumb, indicating exactly what the context will be. I personally like this. But either way is a good approach.

To extend with more parameters:

routes.MapRoute(
            "SearchRecipes",                                              
            "Search/Recipes/{category}/{type}",                           
            new { controller = "Search", action = "Recipes", category = "all" , type = ""}  
 );

Some examples:

Search/Recipes/Deserts/Pie
Search/Recipes/Dinner/Beef
Search/Recipes/Lunch/Salads