ASP.NET MVC3 dynamic routing

Question

I'm having trouble finding the answer to this question anywhere.

I am in need of creating a form where the user can create a post and change the url to the post.

For example, if the default route is

http://www.domain.com/posts/[the-title-of-the-post]

The user can change this to

http://www.domain.com/[modified-title-of-the-post].

The [modified-title-of-the-post] can be anything the user would like to make it. This means it is no longer tied to the title of the post and not only that, but the /posts/ is gone too.

I guess I should Also mention that this should be global, meaning the user should be able to change the url (as mentioned above) for other things on the sites like, /topics/ or /blog/

Any help would be greatly appreciated,

Thanks, Hiva

Answer 1

You could create two routes in your global.asax. Something like this

routes.MapRoute("", "posts/{url}", new { controller = "Home", action = "Posts" });
routes.MapRoute("", "{url}", new { controller = "Home", action = "Posts" });

both of them point to HomeController and the action Posts

public ActionResult Posts(string url)
{

}

to handle every url you should consider to extend the RouteBase class

Something like that should do

public class CustomRouting : RouteBase
{
  public override RouteData GetRouteData(HttpContextBase httpContext)
  {
    RouteData result = null;
    string requestUrl = httpContext.Request.AppRelativeCurrentExecutionFilePath;

    //Handle the request
    //Compile the RouteData with your data
    result = new RouteData(this, new MvcRouteHandler());
    result.Values.Add("controller", "MyController");
    result.Values.Add("action", "MyAction");
    result.Values.Add("id", MyId);
    }
  }
  return result;
}

public override VirtualPathData GetVirtualPath(RequestContext requestContext, RouteValueDictionary values)
{
  //I only need to handle outbound so here is ok
  return null;
}

}

The in your global.asax you register your custom route handler

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

  routes.Add(new CustomRouting());

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