Develop Reference

Creating dynamic routes in mvc5

Based on my SEO team's recommendation i am trying to generate SEO friendly urls. For some static pages i have done that easily using RouteCollection.MapRoute() like -
//Home/Solutions
routes.MapRoute("Solutions", "Solutions", new { controller = "Home", action = "Solutions" }, new[] { "MyAuction.Controllers" });
//Home/SolutionOfferings
routes.MapRoute("Offerings", "Offerings", new { controller = "Home", action = "SolutionOfferings" }, new[] { "MyAuction.Controllers" });
//Home/Pricing
routes.MapRoute("Pricing", "Pricing", new { controller = "Home", action = "Pricing" }, new[] { "MyAuction.Controllers" });
I was then trying to generate SEO friendly routes for my dynamic routes. For example there are several auctions scheduled for a day which contains hundreds of vehicles scheduled within the auction. To show details of that scheduled vehicle within the auction the actual URL is somewhat -
http://example.com/Auction/VehicleDetails?AuctionId=42&VehicleId=101
Please note that VehicleId represents the Identity within AuctionVehicles table which also contains other details of the vehicle like Make, Model, Year and VIN etc.
What i want to achieve is to generate a dynamic URL like -
http://example.com/42/honda-civic-2010-123456
where 42 is the auction id while honda is the make, civic is the model, 2010 is the year and 123456 is the last 6 digits of the VIN number.
Not sure how to achieve this.
I tried using this link -
Dynamic Routes from database for ASP.NET MVC CMS
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Routing is one of the most difficult things to grasp in mvc. The best way i have found is MVC attribute routings in ASP.NET MVC 5. (P.s. i'm typing on a phone)
you simply include this line in your RouteConfig
routes.MapMvcAttributeRoutes();
And then you can set optional parameters and default values and map urls in your actual controllers like this:
[Route("books/{bookName?}")]
public ActionResult View(string bookName)
{
if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(bookName)
{
return View("OneBooks"), GetBooks(bookName));
}
return View("AllBooks"), GetBooks());
}
Your url will look like www.example.com/books/jungle-book
there are many more things you can do. Please read the following article:
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/webdev/2013/10/17/attribute-routing-in-asp-net-mvc-5/
I also found this links and the sublinks on this page to be helpfull to get a proper understanding of mvc routing (lots of reading!!):
https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/641783/Customizing-Routes-in-ASP-NET-MVC
As I said I think attribute routing is your best bet!

Asp.net MVC Routing always to Root with parameters

Now, the question. I have an eCommerce website and I have a controller called Store with an action Index. When someone types www.mysite.com/sony, I want to route to controller Store and action Index with parameter brand=Sony. If someone type www.mysite.com/sony-tv, I want to route to controller Store and action Index but with the parameters brand=sony and department=tv.
I obtained that by creating a route for every situation storing in a database, and building the routes dynamically when the app starts. Its works fine in a few cases.
First, i need to index the routes. I need to map the route sony-tv before the sony, otherwise the /sony-tv maps to /sony equally.
When i enter at site's home (www.mysite.com) and click at Url.Action("Index","Store", new {brand=Sony}) it route me to www.mysite.com/sony. NICE!. Now, inside the SONY brand i'll click at Url.Action("Index","Store", new {brand=sony, department=tv}) and I can see all TV's from Sony.
Everything is running fine until here. In the database, I have 1 route to /sony where I say i have a parameter named brand with value Sony and a constrained named brand with value Sony. I have another route saying the same way to sony-tv. The pattern sony-tv has a parameter named brand with value sony and a parameter named deparment with value tv, and the sames constraints of parameters.
In my head, its means that the route for www.mysite.com/Sony is Store/Index/brand=sony and the www.mysite.com/sony-tv is Store/Index/brand=sony&department=tv. With the constraints, i understand that if department is not TV or if the parameter department does not exists, it will send to www.mysite.com/sony
When i'm at www.mysite.com/sony-tv, if I pass my mouse over the other brands, the link build to Url.Action("Index","Store", new {brand=Apple}) is www.mysite.com/Apple-Tv
I have a route to Apple-TV equal to Sony. The URL exists but i'm not passing the TV parameter. I passed on this link (brands links) only the brand. I want to move the user to brand's root he's moved to brands + department.
I don't know, its looks like the department variable is passing through again and I don't know how to cancel that.
I'm completely wrong? What i'm doing is valid? I can do that? Where is my mistake?
At cshtml file:
#Html.ActionLink(febrand.Name.ToUpper(), "Index", new { controller = "Store", brand= febrand.FriendlyName, department = string.Empty })
at final html file (show source code from google chrome):
SONY

Fisrt, that seems like a lot of work for something that you could do with two custom routes. Additionally, as your route table gets larger (eg. adding more brands and/or departments), each request to your site will take longer to fulfill due to having to scan a larger list of routes.
So, lets attempt to fix your route table. Place these two routes above your default route in the global.asax:
routes.MapRoute(
"Department",
"{brand}-{department}",
new { controller = "Store", action = "Index" };
routes.MapRoute(
"Brand",
"{brand}",
new { controller = "Store", action = "Index" });
As for your issue, when you create your action link, the routing engine is holding onto the department route value from the view you are currently on. To make it forget that parameter when generating a link, send a null across for the department variable when you do not need it.
#Html.ActionLink("Apple", "Index", new{controller="Store", brand="Apple", department = string.empty});
EDIT
I feel you may be in a weird edge case with your routing (and there are numerous examples of this problem all across SO, such as here and here). The solution, other than the one I provided, is to switch to Html.RouteLink instead of Html.ActionLink.
RouteLink Signature that we are going to use
Html.RouteLink(string linkText, string routeName, object RouteValues)
Example Brand link for your code
#Html.RouteLink(febrand.Name.ToUpper(), "Brand", new { controller = "Store", action = "Index", brand= febrand.FriendlyName})

Dynamically generate URL from Database in ASP.NET MVC?

Hello to all developers,
I am trying to find some example of Dynamically generate URL(PURL).
I have seen one software which generate personalised URL from MySQL database .
The only thing is that software is using PHP to generate URL and as a .NET developer I dont know about php.
My question is is there a way that I can fetch data from data base and using perticular field i can generate url which is not actually store in my web space..
eeg.
-----database-----
firstname | lastname ....
===========================
xyz abc
pqwert qweoiuy
alfa beta
the URL should be like
http://something.com/somepersonal/xyz_abc.aspx
http://something.com/somepersonal/pqwert_qweoiuy.aspx
http://something.com/somepersonal/alfa_beta.aspx
It is something like personalised page for users or clients.
I have template to use as back page but dont know how to plug and dynamically generate URL..

You're thinking of this a little backward. Generally, one wouldn't do this by generating it directly from the database. You would generally do this by routing the url batch /somepersonal/ to some personalpage control, which would then consider everything after it, like xyz_abc to be an argument. Personalpage would then use that argument to customize its display, be it from the database or wherever.
So to clarify, your URL would look something like:
http://something.com/personal/vish_soni
http://something.com/personal/colonel_gentleman
http://something.com/personal/general_specific
But all of these are being routed to Personalpage, which then uses vish_soni, colonel_gentleman, and general_specific as arguments to query the database or do whatever else it needs to do.
Microsoft has an overview of this pattern and routing in general here.

You can create a controller class and call an action method. For your case, you just need to send parameter and then lookup customer info to prepare the content.
public class HomeController : Controller
{
public ActionResult Me(string id)
{
ViewBag.Message = "Welcome to ASP.NET MVC! "+id;
var contentobj = repository.GetUSerContent(id);
return View("Index",contentobj);
}
}

MVC 3 dynamic routing for hosted site

I'm working on an MVC 3 site hosted by GoDaddy and I need to store dynamic variables in the URL. Something like:
http://www.example.com/{Cat}/{List}/{Item}/{Action} or
http://{Cat}.example.com/{List}/{Item}/{Action}
The latter would be the best.
The site allows users to create custom lists, list categories, and list items. A list category could be something like Sports or News, a list could be NBA Teams or Politics, and a list item would be Lakers or Pres. Obama. The user is able to generate any one of the 3 (only no duplicates).
My goal is to make the URL be something like http://sports.example.com/nba/lakers and have the user routed to Controller = "Items", Action = "Details", with params Cat = "sports", List = "nba", Item = "lakers" and if the user specifies an Action (like Edit, Delete, etc), it replaces Details.
I'm not super familiar with IIS (more specifically IIS via GoDaddy), so IDK if the subdomaining would work (but that is the ultimate goal) and if it is possible, I'd like to know what I would need to do (i.e. self host + steps).
Thanks

this section is a domain http://sports.example.com/ translating to physical address e.g. 203.10.01.1 you'll have to register a subdomains with GoDaddy. ASP.NET MVC will handle ... nba/lakers section. So your domain will be http://sportworldwide.com/ with subdomains like http://nba.sportworldwide.com/lakers. If want to use MVC 3 only. try something like
sportworldwide.com/sport/nba/lakers.
routes.MapRoute("DefaultSport", "sport/{action}/{id}",
new { controller = "Sport", action = "", id= "" });
EDIT:
I can't comment too much on wildcard DNS records performance or etc. The only problem I see is you'll need to write a custom route handler, then you'll need to get the subdomain part of Url e.g. sport and change the action or id value to handle your subdomain urls.
here is example of modifying the route through a routehandler:
asp.net MvcHandler.ProcessRequest is never called

ASP.NET MVC Routing for Master / Detail Views with "Detail Children"

I have the basic Master / Detail Views working great with the default ASP.NET MVC Route; however I would like to build some URLs like this:
/Class/Details/5 -- General Detail view [Working]
What I'm not sure about (and I'm not tied to this URL format, just something roughly equalivent.)
/Class/5/Details/Logs -- Detail View with Logs
/Class/5/Details/Status -- Detail View with current Status
Another way to put this, is like this:
/{controller}/{id}/{controllerSpecificMaster}/{action}/
What I'm trying to avoid, is cluttering up my Views\Class directory with a bunch of Views, which are all basically derivatives of the Details view.
I'm on ASP.NET MVC 1 and .NET 3.5 SP1.

The first thing you need to get down are your routes. You may have already done this, but in case you haven't, here's a route entry that will handle your custom route needs:
routes.MapRoute("Master_Detail",
"{controller}/{id}/{controllerSpecificMaster}/{action}",
new { controller = "Class",
action = "Index",
id = UrlParameter.Optional,
controllerSpecificMaster = "Details"
});
Then, in your action methods where you want to use the route-specified master page, just include the route key in your method arguments, and then pass it to the view:
public ActionResult Logs(int id, string controllerSpecificMaster)
{
//do something
//return view with master name as argument
return View("Logs", controllerSpecificMaster);
}
If you have to do this a lot, I would suggest creating a custom view engine and override the FindView() method.