Question

I’ve got ASP.NET MVC routing question.

I prepared following routing table to map such url

mywebsite/mycontroller/myaction/14-longandprettyseoname

to parameters:

14 => id (integer)

longandprettyseoname -> seo_name (string)

    routes.MapRoute(
        "myname",
        "mycontroller/myaction/{id}-{seo_name}", 
        new { controller = "mycontroller", action = "myaction", id = 0, seo_name = (string)null });

    routes.MapRoute(
        "Default",  
        "{controller}/{action}/{id}",
        new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = "" });

It works for URL above but it has problems for following type of urls

mywebsite/mycontroller/myaction/14-long-and-pretty-seo-name

Is that possible to make it working?

---

EDIT:

"mycontroller/myaction/{seo_name}-{id}"

seems to be working

Answer 1

I don’t think the route will be distinguishable as it will not be able to figure which “-” to split at to specify the {id} and the {seo-name}.

How about using underscores for your SEO name? Or you could just use the SEO name as the actual {id}. If the SEO name is something that is going to be unique, this is a very viable option you can use as a pseudo primary key to that entry in your db (assuming it’s pulling something from a DB)

Also, utilize Phil Haack’s route debugger to see what works and doesn’t work.