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Multiple controllers, same same controller name

I was wondering if this is possible. Say I have a monolithic Controller, ReportController.cs.
I want to make a totally separate controller file but still keep the /Report/ in the url that we've some to know and expect.
What I tried was this in my global asax:
routes.MapRoute(
"Testing", // Route name
"{test}/{action}/{id}" // URL with parameters
);
and I added a new Controller named ReportTest.cs
the original route looks like this:
routes.MapRoute(
"Default", // Route name
"{controller}/{action}/{id}", // URL with parameters
new { controller = "LandingPage", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults
);
Every time I try to call the simple action I have in ReportTest.cs I get this error: "Value cannot be null or empty. Parameter name: controllerName"
Am I misunderstanding how this works. When you have "{controller}/.." is this not saying 'look for any controllers named + controller and use that'. So if I go to .../Report/DoStuff it'll look for the method DoStuff on ReportController right?
So wouldn't my other route just append a search sequence? So if I put .../Report/DoStuff it'll look for the method DoStuff on ReportController and ReportTest right?

The routing format string:
{controller}/{action}/{id}
Means: the first part ("part" being "element after splitting on /") of the request URI is the controller name, the next part the action method and the last part the ID.
The placeholders {controller} and {action} are special. So your route {test}/{action}/{id} will not find any controller, as none is specified, and {test} doesn't mean anything. (Well it does, it'll get added as a route attribute named "test", and assigned a value representing that part of the request URI, so that is irrelevant for this scenario).
If you want to route an URI to a controller that is not mentioned in the URI, then you must literally specify the prefix, and the controller it should be routed to.
So your routing will look like this:
routes.MapRoute(
"SecondReportController",
"Report/NotOnReportController/{id}",
new { controller = "NotAReportController" }
);
routes.MapRoute(
"Default", // Route name
"{controller}/{action}/{id}", // URL with parameters
new { controller = "LandingPage", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults
);
Then you can use the following controller:
public class NotAReportController : Controller
{
public ActionResult NotOnReportController(int id)
{
// ...
}
}
You can of course also use attribute routing instead:
public class NotAReportController : Controller
{
[Route("Report/NotOnReportController/{id}")]
public ActionResult NotOnReportController(int id)
{
// ...
}
}

How to set up routing so that Index does show?

So I know google can penalize a site if you have the same content on multiple urls... unfortunately, in MVC this is too common i can have example.com/, example.com/Home/ and example.com/Home/Index and all three urls would take me to the same page... so how do I make sure that whenever Index is in the url, that it redirects to the same without the Index and of course the same thing with the Home

Perhaps this little library may be useful for you.
This library is not very convinient in your case, but it should work.
var route = routes.MapRoute(name: "Default",
url: "{controller}/{action}/{id}",
defaults: new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional });
routes.Redirect(r => r.MapRoute("home_index", "/home/index")).To(route);
routes.Redirect(r => r.MapRoute("home", "/home")).To(route);

The way I handle this is for default pages like Index is to simply create an explicit route for only one of them. I.e. "example.com/People" would be the route for People/Index, and there would be no valid page at the url "/example.com/People/Index".
The Home example is unique in that it has potentially three different URLs. Again in this case I'd simply create a route for "example.com" for that Index action, and not support the other two urls. In other words, you would never link to the other forms of the URL, so their absence should never cause a problem.
We use a Nuget package called AttributeRouting to support this. When you specifiy a GET route for a page, it overrides the defaults for MVC.
Using AttributeRouting usually you'd map the index to [GET("")] but for the special case of Home where you also want to also support the root URL that omits the controller name , I think you'd also add an additional attribute with IsAbsoluteUrl:
public class HomeController : BaseController
{
[GET("")]
[GET("", IsAbsoluteUrl = true)]
public ActionResult Index()
{...

So I found a way to do it without any external Library...
In my RouteConfig I had to add these two routes at the top, just below the IgnoreRoute
routes.MapRoute(
"Root",
"Home/",
new { controller = "Redirect", action = "Home" }
);
routes.MapRoute(
"Index",
"{action}/Index",
new { controller = "Redirect", action = "Home" }
);
Then I had to create a new Controller called Redirect and I created a method for each of my other Controllers like this:
public class RedirectController : Controller
{
public ActionResult Home()
{
return RedirectPermanent("~/");
}
public ActionResult News()
{
return RedirectPermanent("~/News/");
}
public ActionResult ContactUs()
{
return RedirectPermanent("~/ContactUs/");
}
// A method for each of my Controllers
}
That's it, now my site looks legit. No more Home, no more Index in my URLs, this of course has the limitation of not being able to accept parameters to any of the Index methods of your Controllers though if it was really necessary, you should be able to tweak this to achieve what you want.
Just an FYI, if you want to pass an argument to your Index Action, then you can add a third route like this:
routes.MapRoute(
name: "ContactUs",
url: "ContactUs/{id}/{action}",
defaults: new { controller = "ContactUs", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional }
);
This will create a URL like this: /ContactUs/14

moving from CodeIgniter to ASP.NET - don't understand default controller actions

I am familiar with CodeIgniter so I'm not a newbie, but I sure feel like one as I move to MVC using C#/.NET. I would expect calling the below controller would properly bind the slash-delimited arguments of URL to the controller input params. Eg: I would expect http://localhost/Download/51 to give fileID=51. However, when I run this, fileID is null when controller is called. Either HttpGet needs querystring with ? and & or need to modify routes somehow to bind properly. Help, please?
[HttpGet]
public ActionResult Download(String fileID)
{
....// http://localhost/Download/51
}

Either use id which is the default route parameter name configured in your Global.asax:
[HttpGet]
public ActionResult Download(string id)
{
....// http://localhost/Download/51
}
or change your routing configuration so that fileID is used:
routes.MapRoute(
"Default",
"{controller}/{action}/{fileid}",
new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", fileid = UrlParameter.Optional }
);
Also checkout the following for more details on routing.

ASP.NET MVC Routing - Custom routes with blogs

I am creating a blog engine, and I need a custom route, like this:
localhost/blogname/posts/1
Where blogname should be handled by a BlogsController, and posts will be an action.
How would I define such a route?

I don't think you need to define {controller} in your Url if you define it as a constraint. I think this should work:
routes.MapRoute("Default",
"{action}/{id}",
new { controller = "Blogs", action = "Posts" },
new { controller = "Blogs"});
It might cause problems with other routes though, I'm not sure. If it doesn't work, David's answer of http://site.com/blogs/posts/id is the best way to go.

This feels like a weird approach. If you use the default routing in ASP.NET MVC, you would need one controller class per blog--not something you can easily create on the fly.
If you use the classname BlogsController, then the default routing would work for URLs of the form:
/Blogs/SomeAction/123
Maybe this is what you're looking for:
public class BlogsController : Controller
{
public ActionResult List()
{
return View(GetPostsOrSomething());
}
public ActionResult Posts(int id)
{
return View(new BlogViewModel(id));
}
[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Comment(int id, string comment)
{
// do comment
}
}
And your routing would need to look like this:
routes.MapRoute(
"Blogs", // Route name
"{blog}/{action}/{id}", // URL with parameters
new { controller = "Blogs", action = "List", id = UrlParameter.Optional }
);
Note
Bear in mind, this would match default style URLs, and everything might be routed to your BlogsController. Maybe you could consider a regular expression for the {blog} part of the pattern:
routes.MapRoute(
"Blogs", // Route name
"{blog}/{action}/{id}", // URL with parameters
new { controller = "Blogs", action = "List", id = UrlParameter.Optional },
new { blog = "(blogname1|blogname2|blogname3|etc)" }
);
But, this isn't very flexible either. Any time you added a blog to your site, this regular expression would require an update. I would probably reconsider your URL structure--something similar to the default style.

Something like this
routes.MapRoute(
"Blogs", // Route name
"{blogname}/{action}/{id}", // URL with parameters
new { controller = "Blog", action = "Posts", id = UrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults
);
would work, meaning you could have your blog controller like this:
public class BlogController : Controller
{
public ActionResult Posts(string blogname, int id)
{
... get posts based on blog name and id and return view...
}
}
but then if you want a url like localhost/admin/dostuff/1 to go to an admin controller, how will MVC know that you don't just mean a 'blogname' called 'admin'?
You would need to do something like the regex matching that David suggests, or else specifically add a route for any other controllers you have before you add the Blog route
e.g.
routes.MapRoute(
"Admin Controller Routes", // Route name
"admin/{action}/{id}", // URL with parameters
new { controller = "Admin", id = UrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults
);
routes.MapRoute(
"Account Controller Routes", // Route name
"account/{action}/{id}", // URL with parameters
new { controller = "Account", id = UrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults
);
... etc - one for each controller ...

I found this approach to be best for my needs. Very simple, goal is to have the title of the blog as the parameter but also the URL (I didn't want a ? to set a parameter value, I have been told it is not helping SEO. Goal is MYURL.com/blog/my-blog-title
ASP.NET MVC
add to your RouteConfig.cs file
routes.MapMvcAttributeRoutes();
routes.MapRoute(
name: "Blog",
url: "blog/{title}",
defaults: new { controller = "Blog", action = "GetBlog" },
constraints: new { title = #"[\w\-]*" }
);
Add a Controller and call it Blog and then add the following Action to that Controller
[Route("blog/{title}")]
public ActionResult GetBlog(string title)
{
// do what ever code you need to do here to get the blog from the title and pass a model to the view using return View(MyBlogObject)
return View();
}

Using the ASP.NET MVC Attribute Based Route Mapper

In my ASP.NET MVC application, I want to use this ASP.NET MVC Attribute Based Route Mapper, first announced here.
So far, I understand how to implement code that uses it, but I've run into a few questions that I think those who have used this attribute-based route mapper in the past will be able to answer.
How do I use it with ActionResults that are for HTTP POSTs? In other words, how does it work with form submissions and the like? Should I just put the URL of the GET method in, or should I use the GET method URL without any parameters (as in HTTP POST they aren't passed in through the URL)?
How do I use it with "URL querystring parameters"? Can the attribute be configured to map to a route such as /controller/action?id=value rather than /controller/action/{id}?
Thanks in advance.

How do I use it with ActionResults
that are for HTTP POSTs?
You decorate the action that you are posting to with the [HttpPost] attribute:
[Url("")]
public ActionResult Index() { return View(); }
[Url("")]
[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Index(string id) { return View(); }
If you decide to give the POST action a different name:
[Url("")]
public ActionResult Index() { return View(); }
[Url("foo")]
[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Index(string id) { return View(); }
You need to supply this name in your helper methods:
<% using (Html.BeginForm("foo", "home", new { id = "123" })) { %>
How do I use it with "URL querystring
parameters"?
Query string parameters are not part of the route definition. You can always obtain them in a controller action either as action parameter or from Request.Params.
As far as the id parameter is concerned it is configured in Application_Start, so if you want it to appear in the query string instead of being part of the route simply remove it from this route definition:
public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
{
routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");
routes.MapRoutes();
routes.MapRoute(
"Default",
"{controller}/{action}",
new { controller = "Home", action = "Index" }
);
}