How can I achieve clean URL routing with custom user ID? - asp.net-mvc

Question

My ASP.NET MVC site allows users to register and give themselves user names, which will be unique and allow others to browse their pages with a clean URL that includes their name, like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. do.
For example:
mysite.com/michael.guthrie
mysite.com/john
mysite.com/john/images
mysite.com/john/blog
etc.
The problem is that the first URL segment might be used for other "regular" controllers/actions, like:
mysite.com/about
mysite.com/register
So basically I seek for a routing scheme that says something like: If the first URL segment is a known controller, treat it as a controller (and parse the relevant action and parameters as usual), but if not - treat it as a user name, and pass it to a dedicated controller+action which will parse it and continue accordingly.
I don't want a solution that will enforce me to add routes for every specific controller that I have, such that after the routing module will go over all of them and won't find a match, it will get to the last one which defines a route for this special user name segment. The reason is primarily maintenance (I must remember to add a route every time I code a new controller, for example.)
I assume I can implement my own MvcRouteHandler / IRouteHandler but I feel there must be simpler solution that won't have me tweak MVC's out-of-the-box routing mechanism.
Note: I've read How to achieve nice litle USER page url like facebook or twitter? and it doesn't answer my question, it's just says that there is a URL rewriting module.
Do you know any good, elegant, clean way to achieve that?

Answer 1

You should have your first route be your Usesr route, with a route constraint along the lines of what I described in this answer: MVC routing question.
If your route is in the form {username}/{controller}/{id}, this route should cover all contingencies.

Answer 2

in the global.asax file you can map your routes
in the registerRoutes() method you can do something like this:
routes.MapRoute(
"ToonStudenten", // Route name
"{controller}/{action}/{userID}, // URL with parameters
new { controller = "Docent", action = "ToonStudenten", userID = UrlParameter.Optional} // Parameter defaults
);
I believe you can change the way your views look with this mapRouting, not entirely sure how though.. will try and search it up
You may want to take a look at this post:
MVC 3 keeping short url
You don't need to set a route for each URL. With a little help from route constraints you can do something like this:
routes.MapRoute(
"Home", // Route name
"{action}", // URL with parameters
new { controller = "Home", action = "Index" }, // Parameter defaults
new { action = "TaskA|TaskB|TaskC|etc" } //Route constraints
);
routes.MapRoute(
"Account", // Route name
"{action}", // URL with parameters
new { controller = "Account", action = "Logon" }, // Parameter defaults
new { action = "Logon|Logoff|Profile|FAQs|etc" } //Route constraints
);