Generate urls that use MapRoute defaults - asp.net-mvc

Question

I have these routes defined:
routes.MapRoute("CategoryList_CountryLanguage", "Categories/{id}/{urlCategoryName}/{country}/{language}",
new {
controller = "Categories",
action = "Details",
});
routes.MapRoute("CategoryList", "Categories/{id}/{urlCategoryName}",
new {
controller = "Categories",
action = "Details",
country = "US",
language = "EN"
});
and I'm generating links using:
#Html.ActionLink("desc", "Details", "Categories", new { id = item.Id, urlCategoryName = item.UrlFriendlyName}, null)
and the generated urls are in the form:
/Categories/id/friendly-name
I want to generate:
/Categories/id/friendly-name/US/EN
without having to specify the country and language in the ActionLink call, can't I use defaults like that?
The easy workaround is to specify those parameters in the ActionLink calls, but I would like to avoid that if possible. My hope is that the first route expects the values specified in the url, while the second has the defaults when not included in the url and would use that to create new urls, no luck so far, is this possible?

Answer 1

You can create a helper class called UrlHelpers.cs that looks like this:
public static class URLHelpers {
public static string CategoryList(this UrlHelper helper, int id, string urlFirendlyName) {
return CategoryList(helper, id, urlFirendlyName, "US", "EN");
}
public static string CategoryList(this UrlHelper helper, int id, string urlFirendlyName, string country, string language)
{
return helper.Action("Details", "Categories", new { id, urlCategoryName = urlFriendlyName, country, language });
}
}
Then in your view you would call it like this:
Some Text
Just a note: You will want to add the namespace of your helper to your web.config in the pages > namespaces section. So if you add a Helpers folder to the root of your MVC app and place the UrlHelper.cs class in it you would add:
<pages>
<namespaces>
<add namespace="System.Web.Helpers" />
<add namespace="System.Web.Mvc" />
<add namespace="System.Web.Mvc.Ajax" />
<add namespace="System.Web.Mvc.Html" />
<add namespace="System.Web.Routing" />
<add namespace="System.Web.WebPages"/>
<add namespace="MyProject.Helpers"/>
</namespaces>
</pages>