MVC Route Mapping

Question

I have a website, xyz.com and users are setting up admin accounts where they then have other users that are registering under them. They call their account name wisconsinsponsor. Another user sets up another account called iowasponsor. So I want to be able to have the ability that a user could browse to xyz.com/wisconsinsponsor and xyz.com/iowasponsor and get funneled into the appropriate settings that these users have setup.

So then after I browse to xyz.com/wisconsinsponsor which will allow me to get the appropriate settings for wisconsinsponsor I can be dropped onto xyz.com/wisconsinsponsor/{controller}/{method}.

So I added the following code.

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

    List<Sponsor> sponsors = new SponsorContext().Sponsors.ToList();

    foreach (Sponsor sponsor in sponsors)
    {
        // ALL THE PROPERTIES:
        // rentalProperties/
        routes.MapRoute(
            name: sponsor.SponsorName,
            url: sponsor.SponsorName + "{controller}/{action}/{id}",
            defaults: new
            {
                controller = "Home",
                action = "Index",
                id = sponsor.SponsorId
            }
        );
    }


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

So the main goal is that without logging in, I can get information that pertains to each "sponsor" and then just generic information if a user goes to 'xyz.com' without specifying a sponsor. The below works to a point for landing on the home page, but then when I navigate to login or any other view, I get for example 'xyz.com/[my first sponsor entry in the database]/admin/login' instead of 'xyz.com/admin/login'. Why doesn't the navigation fall to the Default route?

Think of your sponser as an argument (just like controller and action) instead of generating routes for all of the different sponsers in a for-loop — Yvo, Apr 22 '14 at 17:58

Anthony Shaw · Answer 1 · 2014-04-24T22:48:58.373

2

Change your route to simply include the sponsor, don't create individual routes for every sponsor, this is where routing becomes so powerful

routes.MapRoute(
    name: null, //routes names must be unique, but you can have multiple named null (go figure)
    url: "{sponsor}/{controller}/{action}/{id}",
    defaults: new
    {
        sponsor = "defaultSponsor", //or whatever you want the default to be
        controller = "Home",
        action = "Index",
        id = UrlParameter.Optional
    }
);

Then, decorate each of your action methods with the sponsor argument

public ActionResult Index(string sponsor, int id) { }

Rereading your question tho, this doesn't help in the instance of not having a sponsor, unless your "defaultSponsor" is not really a sponsor, but your generic information that is presented. So when no sponsor is passed in the address bar to the routing, you see 'defaultSponsor' or and empty string and could then handle appropriately

Another reason to handle it this way, is RegisterRoutes is only called upon application start up, so if they were dynamically added while the app is running, they would be invalid routes until the application is restarted. By making it an argument, they would work dynamically as well.

edited Apr 24 '14 at 22:48

answered Apr 22 '14 at 18:15

Anthony Shaw

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Yes, these would be dynamically created and database driven. How do I handle this case where they would be database driven? – Adam Apr 23 '14 at 01:38
by accepting them as an argument on your controller action as I showed in my answer, then you load them the same as you would have using your other routes (I changed the id argument just now as I didn't realize it was coming from your sponsor loop). But you would load the data based on either the sponsor argument, or the id as it looked like you had planned to do originally – Anthony Shaw Apr 23 '14 at 04:26
Seeing that RegisterRoutes is only called at application startup, can I push an entry into the Routing table when a new sponsor would be added to the database? – Adam Apr 24 '14 at 12:16
If you use the method I suggested, it eliminates the need since it becomes more dynamic. Post an example of your Action method that you were calling based on your routing and I'll try to help define it in terms of the routing example I provided. – Anthony Shaw Apr 24 '14 at 14:04

MVC Route Mapping

1 Answers1