Question

This is a newbie question…

I am looking at the default asp.net mvc3 project and noticed that there is a controller called:

public class AccountController : Controller

I looked throughout the code and couldn’t find a place that specified AccountController maps to /Account/ for the URL.

I discovered that you can change the routing using routes.MapRoute(..) in the Global.asax, but I still don’t know where they specified that AccountController maps to /Account/.

If it is assumed from the class name, then does that mean all controller classes have to be named xxxxxController?

Answer 1

Yes you are right, all controllers need to follow the naming convention of an ending "Controller".

See the ControllerName property in the ASP.NET MVC code on CodePlex:

public virtual string ControllerName {
    get {
        string typeName = ControllerType.Name;
        if (typeName.EndsWith("Controller", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
        {
            return typeName.Substring(0, typeName.Length - "Controller".Length);
        }
        return typeName;
    }
}

Anyhow, you could change the naming convention by using your own controller factory.

Hope that helps.