I am currently working with localizing my MVC4 web application and have run in to an issue. My site is in four languages, English, French, Russian and Polish. I set up the sites culture based upon what the user selects. This is not tracked in the url.
I want my urls to be SEO friendly. So I need them to be localized. The tricky part though is that fact I routes set up for my controllers in English. For example
/product/product-name is mapped to the product controller and the get action
/customer/details is mapped to the customer controller and the details action
How can I localize the routes to different languages/cultures? So when I create an action link it maps to correct controller/action, generating the localized url?
I found this solution and it is very elegant but the issue I have is that it does not work as well for dynamic url's, as there is a need for explicit mapping.
Actually I don't know the right answer for that question and it's really very interesting how it possible to do that with standard MVC routing.
But if you do not find proper way to implement that with standard options you could implementing that by hands with the helps of front controler.
You create the class which will be main point of availability inside your app. And inside that method you could implement redirecting logic which will redirect you to the proper controller/action.
Related
So, this is both a technical and a SEO question.
Let's say you are developing an e-commerce site and the client requests that you maintain the category path in the structure of the URL. Example:
/electronics/video-games/ps3/nba2k13-p123774
How do you set up a route that will work for this and send things to the product controller regardless of the number of segments before the last segment? Example:
{arbitrary_cat_routes}/{name}-p{id}
Secondly, I understand wanting to get keywords in the URL, but is there a substantial benefit to this? I've heard that content closer to the root of the site receives some SEO preference. Doesn't buring it 3 directories deep wipe out the SEO benefit of having the keywords there?
The ASP.NET MVC routing does not support a catchall parameter anywhere in the URL just on the end. You would need to create a custom Route class that implements this functionality. This blog post summarizes how you would that. To answer your second question, I would avoid having category metadata in the URL, but I'm not super familiar with SEO.
I am working on site which is scattered in multiple subdomains. From the main site I have to create url which points to sudomains. How can I do this.
for example, my main site is www.mysite.com
I need to create a url pointing to blog.mysite.com/userId/Name which will point to HomeController and Index method witch userId and name.
Also, how should I handle the urls on local machine as well on the production machine.
Help will be appreciated
updating my question here.
What does
#Html.ActionLink("MyLink","Index","Profile","","www.test.com",null,null,null)
do.
It creates a link, but with port number in it. If there is anyway I can avoid it.
Regards
Parminder
As your sub domains will host their own applications with controller and actions I'd recommend to use the good old HTML hyperlink to create that link:
Your Blog
Why: Because you do not want to couple your disjoint applications and ASP.NET MVC does not have a clue (and should not have a clue) about the routes used in some other application. For constructing the link you can add an extension method to HtmlHelper to avoid typos and URL path encoding quirks.
Regarding port number-- you really need to set up a virtual directory in IIS to avoid it. And if you're goal is to have separate sites-- you're going to have to set up virtual directories for all the subsites as well. I am wondering if you really need to set up completely separate sites? How extensive will the subsites be? Will there be any connection between the "root" site and the "sub sites".
Out of curiosity--- how many subsites? If you can do it without revealing too much-- what is the end goal here?
If you are looking for string typed items you might want to use the razor #helper syntax.
You could create #helper.blogLink("Title", "Action", "Controller") that creates a link to the subdomain.
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2011/05/12/asp-net-mvc-3-and-the-helper-syntax-within-razor.aspx
I'm pretty new to ASP.NET MVC and I just want ask of this scenario is possible and, if so, could anybody provide any resource links on how to implement it.
Say I have a site that can be accessed from www.mysite.com, can I also have the same site load up through www.mysite2com, www.mysite3.com and so on? effectively providing the ability to run multiple sites from a single code base?
The idea is to have the site content and style sheet change depending on site visited but keep the structure the same.
thank you very much for any help you can provide :)
Kris
Yes, this is possible
http://web.archive.org/web/20100119084358/http://just3ws.wordpress.com/2010/01/03/skinning-your-asp-net-mvc-application-based-on-your-sub-domain
This example uses subdomains of the same domain but nothing stops you from using the same logic and have different images/CSS/paths etc generated based on full HOST/domain name
I really like the way ASP.NET MVC works. I'd love to implement it on all new web projects moving forward, but I hit a snag in a prototype the other day that I really haven't found a good solution for, so I ask you, how would you design an MVC app that doesn't fit the typical REST pattern? As an example, the prototype I was designing would have several pages, but the pages themselves aren't necessarily bound to a domain model. For example, take a simple registration site, which might have the following pages:
/Default.aspx
/Register.aspx
/ThankYou.aspx
Occasionally, such a program might require an admin section to deal with such details as moderating sign ups or reviewing data. In a standard ASP.NET web app, I might add the following
/Admin/Default.aspx
/Admin/ListRegistrations.aspx
/Admin/ViewReports.aspx ...
Would it be an unacceptable deviation from the MVC pattern, in this case, to have two controllers such as:
Home->Index
Home->Register
Home->ThankYou
Admin->Index
Admin->ListRegistrations
Admin->Reports
My frustration with this is compounded by the fact that there is no real solid implementation of subcontrollers and areas yet. I'm aware of the "Areas" prototype put together by Phil Haack, but it's not very mature, and quite frankly, I'm not sure I like the way it's setup, but I don't really know how I'd like to see that work either.
I guess when I think MVC, I tend to think REST as well, and having controller actions that represent pages rather than actual entities or actions doesn't sit right with me. What do you think?
You can always mix ASP.NET Web Forms with MVC.
Just add
routes.IgnoreRoute("Pages/{*path}");
to your routing table and add traditional Web form pages to Pages folder of the application.
One mistake that newcomers to MVC make is to group actions into a controller for display reasons. In your case, instead of grouping the Register and ThankYou actions in with the homepage try separating them out into an AccountController as the MVC team has done in the sample project. You can use routing to set the Url's up however you want for the end-user.
As for your other actions, how about a ReportController? You could then additionally have an AdministrationController whose Index action/view contains links to various admin actions, including those on the ReportController.
Short Version: Group actions into a controller by function, not site navigation.
I usually ditch the "Home" controller as the first thing in a project and replace it with a "Page" controller. I use that one for anything that is "just" a page. Things like "FAQ", "Contact Us", etc. I do this at least partially because the default approach to the Home controller requires a new method being added every time you need even a basic, static page.
In that controller, I only have the one action: Display. That action gives all of those pages the same context object. I actually store the content for those pages in the database with a lookup "slug" and tie it into NVelocity templating, but even just static HTML or NVelocity templates in files would work too.
Anything else, like the others said, gets split into controllers by the "thing" being managed. So, a ReportController, User or AccountController, CartController, etc. Then the actions make much more sense.
When you're talking about listing the registered users, it's actually a list of users, so I'd have a UserController and do /User/Display/Registered/MostRecent or something similar. For the registration itself, /User/Register which would post to /User/SaveRegistration which could, in turn, redirect to /User/DisplayProfile/NewUserID or /Page/Display/Home from there.
You can have as many controllers as makes sense; that layout looks reasonable. Note that routes don't have to map directly to {controller}/{action}, but it keeps things simple. Looks fine to me - except I'd probably have ThankYou as a view - i.e. the Register [GET] perhaps uses a different view to Register [POST]
I have a website where my present "geeky" urls look like:
http://www.bestatdubaiholidays.co.uk/pages/Quote/Details.aspx?GUID=01a25b0c-e0ac-40ba-abd1-298f3abd9612
I want to change these to Search Engine Friendly ones - something like:
http://www.bestatdubaiholidays.co.uk/the-palm-atlantis.aspx
or
http://www.bestatdubaiholidays.co.uk/the-palm-atlantis
I have hundreds of incoming links (from ad campaigns and other sites) to my geeky urls that I want to retain.
So if someone types a geeky url, I want the address bar to show the equivalent search engine friendly url.
Can anyone help? Referring to other articles won't help. Believe me, I've read every one of them. Any example urls will be helpful.
Use something like this http://blog.eworldui.net/post/2008/04/ASPNET-MVC---Legacy-Url-Routing.aspx
You don't have to use MVC, the routing classes are standalone now
I suggest using a Front controller. This means that you use the rewrite engine of whatever httpd server you're using to redirect ALL requests to a single file (index.php or index.aspx or whathaveyou) and then you use code in that file to dispatch to the appropriate page. You can do a redirect from the geeky URLs to the friendly URLs, and if it's a friendly url then you load the appropriate page.
This would be way easier than writing huge rewrite rules for each type of page you might have. And this way all of the work is done in the same language your site is already running, so you don't have to learn and maintain a new file that is in its own language just for the redirection.