asp.net mvc dynamic area selection based on route parameter value

Question

I am working on an application surrounding sporting events. There are different types of events like a soccer tournament and a tennis tournament. Based on the type of tournament I want to have the requests proccessed by a different area. But the events and their tournament type is something that is configurable by users of the application and stored in the database.

Currrently I have this proof of concept:

public class SoccerTournamentAreaRegistration : AreaRegistration
{
 public override string AreaName
 {
 get
 {
 return "SoccerTournament";
 }
 }
 public override void RegisterArea(AreaRegistrationContext context)
 {
 var soccerTournaments = new string[] { "championsleague", "worldcup" };
 foreach (var tournament in soccerTournaments)
 {
 context.MapRoute(
 string.Format("SoccerTournament_default{0}", tournament),
 string.Format("{0}/{{controller}}/{{action}}/{{id}}", tournament),
 new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional },
 new[] { "Mvc3AreaTest1.Areas.SoccerTournament.Controllers" }
 );
 }
 }
}

and it works only I want soccerTournaments to come from the database (not a problem) but I also want it to work ask soon as a new event/tournament type record is added to the database and that doesn't work in this case.

How can I make the area selection dynamic instead of hard coded into routes?

Answer 1

Area registration only occurs at the application start, so any tournaments added after startup will not be captured until a re-start.

To have a dynamic routing scheme for your tournaments, you must redefine your area route and add a RouteConstraint.

Redefine your route as follows:

public override void RegisterArea(AreaRegistrationContext context)
{
 context.MapRoute(
 "SoccerTournament_default",
 "{tournament}/{controller}/{action}/{id}", 
 new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional },
 new { tournament = new MustBeTournamentName() },
 new string[] { "Mvc3AreaTest1.Areas.SoccerTournament.Controllers" }
 );
}

Than, you can create the MustBeTournamentName RouteConstraint to be similar to the RouteConstraint in the answer to this question: Asp.Net Custom Routing and custom routing and add category before controller