MVC4 Custom Routing - Validating Personalized Urls

Question

I have a website in MVC4 that I am developing that requires some custom routing. It is a simple website with a few pages. For example:

/index
/plan
/investing
... etc.. a few others

Through an admin panel the site administrator can create "branded" sites, that basically mirror the above content, but swap out a few things like branded company name, logo etc. Once created, the URLs would look like

/{personalizedurl}/index
/{personalizedurl}/plan
/{personalizedurl}/investing

... etc... (exact same pages as the non branded pages.

I am validating the personalized urls with an action filter attribute on the controller method and returning a 404 if not found in the database.

Here is an example of one of my actions:

[ValidatePersonalizedUrl]
[ActionName("plan")]
public ActionResult Plan(string url)
{
    return View("Plan", GetSite(url));
}

Easy-peasy so far and works pretty well with the following routes:

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

    routes.MapRoute(
        name: "Admin",
        url: "Admin/{action}/{id}",
        defaults: new { controller = "Admin", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional }
    );

    routes.MapRoute(
        name: "Default",
        url: "{action}",
        defaults: new { controller = "Default", action = "Index" }
    );

    routes.MapRoute(
        "Branded", // Route name
        "{url}/{action}", // URL with parameters
        new { controller = "Default", action = "Index" } // Parameter defaults
    );

/*
    routes.MapRoute(
        "BrandedHome", // Route name
         "{url}/", // URL with parameters
         new { controller = "Default", action = "Index" } // Parameter defaults
    );
*/
}

The problem I currently have is with the bottom commented out route. I'd like to be able to go to /{personalizedurl}/ and have it find the correct action (Index action in default controller). right now with the bottom line commented out, I get a 404 because it thinks its an action and its not found. When I un-comment it, the index pages, work however the individual actions do not /plan for example because it thinks its a pUrl and can't find it in the database.

Anyway, sorry for the long question. Any help or suggestions on how to set this up would be greatly appreciated.

James

Answer 1

The problem is that MVC will use the first matching url and since the second route is:

routes.MapRoute(
  name: "Default",
  url: "{action}",
  defaults: new { controller = "Default", action = "Index" }
);

and that matches your /{personalizedurl}/ it will route to Default/{action}.

What you want gets a bit tricky! I assume the personalizing is to be dynamic, not some static list of branded companies and you wouldn't want to recompile and deploy every time you add/remove a new one.

I think you will need to handle this in the controller, it won't work well in routing; unless it is a static list of personalized companies. You will need the ability to check if the first part is one of your actions and to check if it is a valid company, I will give you an example with simple string arrays. I believe you will be building the array by query some sort of data store for your personalized companies. I also have created a quick view model called PersonalizedViewModel that takes a string for the name.

Your routing will be simplified:

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

  routes.MapRoute(
    name: "Admin",
    url: "Admin/{action}/{id}",
    defaults: new { controller = "Admin", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional }
  );

  routes.MapRoute(
    name: "Default",
    url: "{url}/{action}",
    defaults: new { controller = "Default", action = "Index", url = UrlParameter.Optional }
  );
}

Here is the view model my example uses:

public class PersonalizedViewModel
{
  public string Name { get; private set; }
  public PersonalizedViewModel(string name)
  {
    Name = name;
  }
}

And the Default controller:

public class DefaultController : Controller
{
  private static readonly IEnumerable<string> personalizedSites = new[] { "companyA", "companyB" };
  private static readonly IEnumerable<string> actions = new[] { "index", "plan", "investing", "etc" };

  public ActionResult Index(string url)
  {
    string view;
    PersonalizedViewModel viewModel;
    if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(url) || actions.Any(a => a.Equals(url, StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase)))
    {
      view = url;
      viewModel = new PersonalizedViewModel("Default");
    }
    else if (personalizedSites.Any(s => s.Equals(url, StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase)))
    {
      view = "index";
      viewModel = new PersonalizedViewModel(url);
    }
    else
    {
      return View("Error404");
    }

    return View(view, viewModel);
  }

  public ActionResult Plan(string url)
  {
    PersonalizedViewModel viewModel;
    if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(url))
    {
      viewModel = new PersonalizedViewModel("Default");
    }
    else if (personalizedSites.Any(s => s.Equals(url, StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase)))
    {
      viewModel = new PersonalizedViewModel(url);
    }
    else
    {
      return View("Error404");
    }

    return View(viewModel);
  }
}