Any way to override attribute on action method without having to override the whole method?

Question

I'm using attribute routing in MVC 5, but I've began to notice a bit of a pain point. I have a situation where I want to subclass a controller because all the actions are going to do the same thing. However, I will obviously need to use different routes for the subclasses' actions. Right now, I'm doing something akin to:

public class FooController : Controller
{
    [Route("foo", Name = "Foo")]
    public virtual ActionResult Foo()
    {
        ...

        return View();
    }
}

public class BarController : FooController
{
    [Route("bar", Name = "Bar")]
    public override ActionResult Foo()
    {
        return base.Foo();
    }
}

This just seems awful to me. I'm not repeating the code for the actual action method (which in some cases is quite a lot), at least, but this just feels wrong to me. Also, in situations where the base action method definition changes for some reason, this becomes a bit of a maintenance nightmare. Is there some way I'm missing, in general, to change the attribute without having to override the method? Perhaps, something attribute routing-specific. Or am I just kind of out of luck?

Answer 1

Check out this SO post and answer

Multiple RoutePrefixes per controller using MVC Attribute routing?

You could do something like this then:

[RoutePrefix("{Type:regex(Foo|Bar)}")]
public class FooController : Controller
{
    [Route("foo", Name = "Foo")]
    public virtual ActionResult Foo()
    {
        ...

        return View();
    }
}

Answer 2

I know I'm a million years late to the party, but I would have abstracted away the common code between the two to an abstract controller class, and then inherited that class on both your Foo and Bar controllers. Then you could either override the methods that need to be different for each controller and giving them an attribute in the derived controllers, or not put the method that would need to be overridden in the base controller class to begin with. Regardless though, I probably would have gone the Routing.config way for specifying route names and such as opposed to the Attribute way.

EDIT

What you had

public class FooController : Controller
{
    [Route("foo", Name = "Foo")]
    public virtual ActionResult Foo()
    {
        ...

    return View();
    }
}

public class BarController : FooController
{
    [Route("bar", Name = "Bar")]
    public override ActionResult Foo()
    {
        return base.Foo();
    }
}

What I'm suggesting

public abstract class _baseController : Controller
{
    public ActionResult ActionThatDoesNotNeedToBeOverridden()
    {
        ...
        return View();
    }

    public virtual ActionResult Foo()
    {
        ...
        return View();
    }
}

public class FooController : _baseController
{
    [Route("foo", Name = "Foo")]
    public override ActionResult Foo()
    {
        return base.Foo();
    }
}

public class BarController : _baseController
{
    [Route("bar", Name = "Bar")]
    public override ActionResult Foo()
    {
        return base.Foo();
    }
}

EDIT 2 You could do this if you don't want to override or bother with routing

public class _baseController : Controller
{
    public ActionResult Foo()
    {
        ...
        return View();
    }
}

public class BarController : Controller
{
    public ActionResult Bar()
    {
        var b = new _baseController();
        return b.Foo();
    }
}