Custom route for writing friendly URLs in ASP.NET MVC 3

Question

I'm trying to build friendly URLs like /post/1/my-first-post. I started out with building my links like this:

@Html.ActionLink(Model.BlogPost.Title, "Index", "Post", new
{
 id = Model.BlogPost.Id,
 title = Model.FriendlyUrl
}, 
new { })

which were processed by this route:

routes.MapRoute(
 "Post", // Route name
 "posts/{id}/{title}", // URL with parameters
 new { controller = "Post", action = "Index" }, // Parameter defaults
 new { id = "^[0-9]+$" }
 );

When I create my view model, I would give it an IUrlNiceName which it used to create the output of FriendlyUrl:

public string FriendlyUrl
{
 get{ return UrlNiceName.ConvertToNiceName(BlogPost.Title); }
}

Then I felt like I didn't want to manage UrlNiceName-ing on the controller level so then I build a custom Route to do this for me:

public class NiceNameRoute : RouteBase
{
 private IUrlNiceNames UrlNiceNames { get; set; }
 private string UrlPrefix { get { return "post/"; } }
 public NiceNameRoute(IUrlNiceNames urlNiceNames)
 {
 UrlNiceNames = urlNiceNames;
 }
 public override RouteData GetRouteData(HttpContextBase httpContext)
 {
 RouteData result = null;
 string requestedURL = httpContext.Request.AppRelativeCurrentExecutionFilePath;
 //match e.g. post/1 or post/1/my-first-post
 Regex regex = new Regex(UrlPrefix + "[0-9]+($|/)");
 if (regex.Match(requestedURL).Success)
 {
 //get the start of the post id
 int prefixPos = requestedURL.IndexOf(UrlPrefix, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase);
 int startIdPos = prefixPos + UrlPrefix.Length;
 //get the end of the post id
 int endIdPos = requestedURL.IndexOf("/", startIdPos, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase);
 endIdPos = endIdPos == -1 ? requestedURL.Length : endIdPos;
 //get post id
 string id = requestedURL.Substring(startIdPos, endIdPos - startIdPos);
 result = new RouteData(this, new MvcRouteHandler());
 result.Values.Add("controller", "Post");
 result.Values.Add("action", "Index");
 result.Values.Add("id", id);
 }
 return result;
 }
 public override VirtualPathData GetVirtualPath(RequestContext requestContext,
 RouteValueDictionary values)
 {
 VirtualPathData result = null;
 if (values.ContainsKey("title")
 && Convert.ToString(values["action"]) == "Index"
 && Convert.ToString(values["controller"]) == "Post")
 {
 string niceName = UrlNiceNames.ConvertToNiceName(Convert.ToString(values["title"]));
 result = new VirtualPathData(this, UrlPrefix + Convert.ToString(values["id"]) + "/" + niceName);
 }
 return result;
 }
}

which I registered like this:

routes.Add(new NiceNameRoute(new HyphenUrlNiceNames()));

and generate links like this:

@Html.ActionLink(Model.BlogPost.Title, "Index", "Post", new
{
 id = Model.BlogPost.Id,
 title = Model.BlogPost.Title
}, 
new { })

I first wanted to take a crack at this but now I want to know how industry experts do it. Am I over engineering? Is there a simpler approach that is also elegant? Are there any issues with my custom Route?

• Ata S.: This is what you are searching for: nuget.org/packages/LowercaseDashedRoute And read the one-line configuration here please: github.com/AtaS/lowercase-dashed-route

Answer 1

Personally I think you are over thinking it. Why not just create a string extension method called FriendlyString or PrepareForUrl and then use the original route

@Html.ActionLink(Model.BlogPost.Title, "Index", "Post", new
{
 id = Model.BlogPost.Id,
 title = Model.BlogPost.Title.FriendlyString()
}, null)

• enamrik: Thank you. I WAS beginning to feel like I was making a mountain out of a mole hill. After reviewing your simple answer I realized that my simple goal did not require the complexity I was forcing unto it. And after enjoying making a custom route, I don't think it helped with my goal at all. Now I'm wondering how I got that far. I need to learn to catch waste-of-time stuff like this earlier.
• dav_i: @enamrik I actually think your way is better. Yes it is more work but has a better separation of concerns - your View shouldn't have knowledge of how the routes are structured, which it does if you use this method.