How to hide id in the url (MVC3) - asp.net-mvc

Question

Problem
In my project i decided to imlement a custom menu provider using a db stored entity "Section".
So the section is mapped to the following Model:
public class TopMenuItemModel : BaseTrivitalModel
{
public TopMenuItemModel()
{
ChildItems = new List<TopMenuItemModel>();
}
public int ItemId { get; set; }
public string RouteUrl { get; set; }
public string Title { get; set; }
public string SeName { get; set; }
public IList<TopMenuItemModel> ChildItems { get; set; }
}
And the view for the model:
#model TopMenuModel
<nav id="main-nav">
#T("HomePage")
#foreach (var parentItem in Model.MenuItems)
{
#parentItem.Title
}
</nav>
My Default route is:
routes.MapRoute(
"Default", // Route name
"{controller}/{action}/{id}", // URL with parameters
new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional },
new[] { "Trivital.Web.Controllers" }
);
Controller for the menu:
public class CommonController : BaseTrivitalController
{
...
public ActionResult TopMenu()
{
var sections = _sectionService.GetCollectionByParentId(0, true);
var model = new TopMenuModel();
model.MenuItems = sections.Select(x =>
{
var item = new TopMenuItemModel()
{
ItemId = x.Id,
Title = x.GetLocalized(s => s.Title, _workContext.WorkingLanguage.Id, true, true),
SeName = x.GetSeName(),
RouteUrl = "",
};
return item;
})
.ToList();
return PartialView(model);
}
}
}
Now I have a SectionController where I have an ActionResult method:
//section main page
public ActionResult Section(string seName)
{
var section = _sectionService.Get(1);
if (section == null || section.Deleted || !section.Published)
return RedirectToAction("Index", "Home");
//prepare the model
var model = PrepareSectionPageModel(section);
return View(model);
}
My current Route for the Section (that gives me host/sectionSeName-id):
routes.MapLocalizedRoute(
"section", // Route name
"{SeName}"+ "-" + "{sectionId}", // URL with parameters
new { controller = "Sections", action = "Section" },
new { sectionId = #"\d+" }
);
Now I need to get my Url looks like this (without id, just the section name):
host/sectionSeName
Is there anyway to hide the Id in the url to make the urls look SEO-friendly, but available for the controller?

Answer 1

You can try utilizing the urlMappings in your web.config. Specify something like the following:
<urlMappings enabled="true">
<add url="~/somedirectory/" mappedUrl="~/somedirectory/1/"/>
</urlMappings>
Though, I don't think anything will work unless each section has it's own unique name. Otherwise you'll have some conflicting URLs.
You may also want to consider doing some custom work as well using IIS's rewrite module:
http://www.iis.net/learn/extensions/url-rewrite-module/using-the-url-rewrite-module
The company I work for uses this for it's KB article system, which is similar to your situation, and it works pretty well. (folder/id)