Same route parameters with different controllers' action methods causes an error in Asp .Net MVC

Question

I m using attribute routing feature of Asp .Net Mvc. My first action is like below which is placed in SurveyController

    [Route("{surveyName}")]
    public ActionResult SurveyIndex()
    {
        return View();
    }

And my second action is like below which is placed in MainCategoryController

    [Route("{categoryUrlKey}")]
    public ActionResult Index(string categoryUrlKey)
    {
        return View();
    }

I'm not using convention based routing. Below is my RouteConfig.

    public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
    {
        routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");
        routes.MapRoute(name: "Default", url: "{controller}/{action}/{id}", defaults: new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional });
        routes.MapAttributeRoutes();
    }

Now the problem is when i click to a survey it redirects to the MainCategory/Index route. I know it is because of same route pattern but i cant change this into another thing. how can I handle this situation? Thanks

Answer 1

You should prefix the routes on your MainCaregoryController, either at the controller level like this:

[RoutePrefix("category")]
public class MainCategoryController : Controller {

or at the action level like this:

[Route("category/{categoryUrlKey}")]
public ActionResult Index(string categoryUrlKey)
{
    return View();
}

Routes should not clash. This route:

[Route("{categoryUrlKey}")]
public ActionResult Index(string categoryUrlKey)
{
    return View();
}

matches any string and passes that string value into the action, so without a prefix it will match:

http://localhost/validcategorykey

and

http://localhost/something/id/isthispointmakingsense

and your categoryUrlKey parameter would equal "validcategorykey" in the first instance and "something/id/isthispointmakingsense" in the second.

Now as for this route:

[Route("{surveyName}")]
public ActionResult SurveyIndex()
{
    return View();
}

This just won't work period. This needs to be changed to:

[Route("survey/{surveyName}")]
public ActionResult SurveyIndex(string surveyName)
{
    return View();
}