Troubles creating URLs in a VB.NET MVC view - asp.net-mvc

Question

I'm trying to write out animals from a database. All the samples I see for creating View pages have hard-coded "nodes" in the URLs. I can get my first view to work but my second one doesn't write out the correct URL to go to the third one. So, for example, I want my URLs to be:
/animals/
/animals/canines/
/animals/canines/schnauzer
I have the default route setup:
> routes.MapRoute( _
> "Default", _
> "{controller}/{action}/{id}", _
> New With {.controller = "Home", .action = "Index", .id =
> UrlParameter.Optional} _
> )
The first URL works great and I can list the animal groups on the first one along with the correct links to the second URLs. I do that as follows:
for each animal in model
Html.ActionLink(animal.animal_name,animal.animal_name.Trim)
next
I also can get the canine groups written out on the second (so I know my model is working), however the URL.Action on that second "canines" page loses the "canines" in the URL so it renders as:
/animals/schnauzer
I've tried every way I can think of to write out the link including:
<a href="<%= url.action(canine.dog_name.Trim)) %>">
<a href="<%= Url.Content("~" & url.action(canine.dog_name.Trim)) %>">
and a few others that aren't worth showing. ;-D
... I'm guessing I'm missing something in a route path but what is it? It can't be that I have to know the path I'm at on every page in order to write out the URL - can it?
Thanks in advance for your help!

Answer 1

The route youve configured looks for three components, a controller, action and id.
In your case /animals/schnauzer, you're looking for more than a single route element as far as HTTP routing (and link generation), is concerned. It sees /animals/canines as two different values.
If you're looking to allow a route like http://yoursite/Family/Species, specify it as such:
routes.mapRoute("familyspecies", "animals/{family}/{species}", new { controller = "Home", action = "Animals", Species = UrlParameter.Optional});
and pass family and species in to your actions
public ActionResult Animals(string family, string species){...}
OR
Use wildcard routes to direct everything after the action to the id
routes.MapRoute("{controller}/{action}/{*id}");