Question

Let’s say I have a ColorsController and a Colors/Index.cshtml View for that controller.
I want to make the user able to type an url of the form

Colors/Index/<coma separated list of colors>

and then have the string “abc” be printed for each color that the user passed in, in that same color.
An example of an URL would be

Colors/Index/red,white,green,yellow

Now, I’ve defined the routing the following way:

    routes.MapRoute(
        "Default",
        "{controller}/{action}/{color}",
        new { controller = "Colors", action = "Index", color = "black" }

and here is the controller’s code:

public ActionResult Index(string colorsParams) {
    string[] colors = colorsParams.Split(',');
    return View(); //currently does not use colors
}

My question is now on how to go from here on. Should I pass the colorsParams directly to the view and have it parse the info there? Should I do that kind of logic in the model? Right here in the Index() method? This kind of “parsing” logic doesn’t seem to be suitable for the model, I’d say. On the other hand I’d risk saying the view is not the right place, too. How to do this?

Thanks

Answer 1

Controller seem to be acceptable, but if you are going to use it on large scale, consider making custom binder. Passing parsed values to view should be done with model. You can also use ViewBag or ViewData, but using that decreases code maintenability.