Infinite URL Parameters for ASP.NET MVC Route

Question

I need an implementation where I can get infinite parameters on my ASP.NET Controller. It will be better if I give you an example :

Let's assume that I will have following urls :

example.com/tag/poo/bar/poobar
example.com/tag/poo/bar/poobar/poo2/poo4
example.com/tag/poo/bar/poobar/poo89

As you can see, it will get infinite number of tags after example.com/tag/ and slash will be a delimiter here.

On the controller I would like to do this :

foreach(string item in paramaters) { 
 //this is one of the url paramaters
 string poo = item;
}

Is there any known way to achieve this? How can I get reach the values from controller? With Dictionary<string, string> or List<string>?

NOTE :

The question is not well explained IMO but I tried my best to fit it. in. Feel free to tweak it

Answer 1

Like this:

routes.MapRoute("Name", "tag/{*tags}", new { controller = ..., action = ... });
ActionResult MyAction(string tags) {
 foreach(string tag in tags.Split("/")) {
 ...
 }
}

• tugberk: hmm, looks like so neat. gonna give it a try.
• tugberk: what is the role of {*tags} there? Especially, *.
• SLaks: That's a catch-all parameter. msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/…
• tugberk: so, can we use all wildcard parameters on ASP.NET MVC framework like that or just *?
• Robert Koritnik: @tugberk: You can only use * and it always has to be the first character of a catch-all parameter. It is not a wildcard character in any way shape or form. It just means that this route parameter will catch everything from that point on in your URL.

Answer 2

The catch all will give you the raw string. If you want a more elegant way to handle the data, you could always use a custom route handler.

public class AllPathRouteHandler : MvcRouteHandler
{
 private readonly string key;
 public AllPathRouteHandler(string key)
 {
 this.key = key;
 }
 protected override IHttpHandler GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext)
 {
 var allPaths = requestContext.RouteData.Values[key] as string;
 if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(allPaths))
 {
 requestContext.RouteData.Values[key] = allPaths.Split('/');
 }
 return base.GetHttpHandler(requestContext);
 }
} 

Register the route handler.

routes.Add(new Route("tag/{*tags}",
 new RouteValueDictionary(
 new
 {
 controller = "Tag",
 action = "Index",
 }),
 new AllPathRouteHandler("tags")));

Get the tags as a array in the controller.

public ActionResult Index(string[] tags)
{
 // do something with tags
 return View();
}

Answer 3

That's called catch-all:

tag/{*tags}

Answer 4

Just in case anyone is coming to this with MVC in .NET 4.0, you need to be careful where you define your routes. I was happily going to global.asax and adding routes as suggested in these answers (and in other tutorials) and getting nowhere. My routes all just defaulted to {controller}/{action}/{id}. Adding further segments to the URL gave me a 404 error. Then I discovered the RouteConfig.cs file in the App_Start folder. It turns out this file is called by global.asax in the Application_Start() method. So, in .NET 4.0, make sure you add your custom routes there. This article covers it beautifully.

Answer 5

in asp .net core you can use * in routing for example

[HTTPGet({*id})]

this code can multi parameter or when using send string with slash use them to get all parameters