Question

Is it possible to overload the action methods based on number of parameters in request?

Eg:

1.
domain.com/List/Filter/ByName
invokes -> public ActionResult Filter(string criteria1)

2.
domain.com/List/Filter/ByName/ByRanking
invokes -> public ActionResult Filter(string criteria1, string criteria2)

I’m using asp.net mvc2.

Answer 1

If I’m not mistaken the best way to do this would be to add two different controller methods and map them to two different Urls.

public ActionResult Filter1(string criteria1);

public ActionResult Filter2(string criteria1, criteria2);

Then you have two route definitions:

This will map this URL List/Filter/xxCriteria/ to the first controller

routes.MapRoute(
            "Filter",                                              // Route name
            "{controller}/Filter/{criteria1}",                           // URL with parameters
            new { controller = "List", action = "Filter1", criteria="" }  // Parameter defaults
        );

This will map this URL List/Filter/xxCriteriaName/xxxCriteriaRank to the second controller. Without this route you could still map a url to the second method, but it would look like : List/Filter/?criteria1=xx&criteria2=xx

routes.MapRoute(
            "Filter2",                                              // Route name
            "{controller}/Filter/{criteria1}/{criteria2}",                           // URL with parameters
            new { controller = "List", action = "Filter2", criteria1 = "", criteria2 = "" }  // Parameter defaults
        );

Hope it helped.