Question

We’re using Areas with a project. And we’re also using this fix to replaces dashes in page names

 routes.Add(
            new Route("{controller}/{action}/{id}",
                new RouteValueDictionary(
                    new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional }),
                    new HyphenatedRouteHandler())
            );



        public class HyphenatedRouteHandler : MvcRouteHandler
        {
            protected override IHttpHandler GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext)
            {
                requestContext.RouteData.Values["controller"] = requestContext.RouteData.Values["controller"].ToString().Replace("-", "_");
                requestContext.RouteData.Values["action"] = requestContext.RouteData.Values["action"].ToString().Replace("-", "_");
                return base.GetHttpHandler(requestContext);
            }
        }

This Fix works fine with the normal top level pages. Home/some-page.
But when it comes to an Area this no longer works. I tried modifying the AreaRegistration.cs file to be an equivalent to the Global.asax.cs route but that didn’t work either. I can rename the pages with [ActionName(“some-page”)] but it doesn’t solve the problem of the controller still having underscores Area/some_folder/some-page and I don’t want my URLs to look like that.

Edit:
When I use the route that Darin Dimitrov suggest I get this error:

Multiple types were found that match the controller named ‘page’. This can happen if the route that services this request (‘admin/{controller}/{action}/{id}’) does not specify namespaces to search for a controller that matches the request. If this is the case, register this route by calling an overload of the ‘MapRoute’ method that takes a ‘namespaces’ parameter.

We have multiple “segments” that have the same names but different content to target the segment audience

Answer 1

The following should work in your area registration:

public override void RegisterArea(AreaRegistrationContext context)
{
    context.Routes.Add(
        "Admin_default",
        new Route("Admin/{controller}/{action}/{id}",
            new RouteValueDictionary(
                new { action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional }
            ),
            null,
            new RouteValueDictionary(
                new 
                { 
                    area = AreaName
                }
            ),
            new HyphenatedRouteHandler()
        )
    );
}

---

UPDATE:

You seem to be having the same controller name in multiple areas which is not possible without defining a namespace constraint when registering your routes as the error message you are getting suggests you to do.

So in your Global.asax:

public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
{
    routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");

    routes.Add(
        "Default",
        new Route(
            "{controller}/{action}/{id}",
            new RouteValueDictionary(
                new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional }
            ),
            null,
            new RouteValueDictionary(
                new { Namespaces = new[] { "AppName.Controllers" } }
            ),
            new HyphenatedRouteHandler()
        )
    );
}

and in your AreaRegistration:

public override void RegisterArea(AreaRegistrationContext context)
{
    context.Routes.Add(
        "Admin_default",
        new Route(
            "Admin/{controller}/{action}/{id}",
            new RouteValueDictionary(
                new { action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional }
            ),
            null,
            new RouteValueDictionary(
                new 
                { 
                    Namespaces = new[] { "AppName.Areas.Admin.Controllers" },
                    area = AreaName
                }
            ),
            new HyphenatedRouteHandler()
        )
    );
}

You might need to adjust the namespace in the constraint to match yours.