What are extensibility points of URL generation in ASP.NET MVC?
Routes - virtual path depends on it
???
Addendum 1
Particularily, I need to control not only path part of URL but the host also. And I'd like to embed my generation logics into MVC Framework so that any call to standard Html.ActionLink method would involve my logics. It would be perfect. However, investigating MVC sources I'm desperate to achieve my goal with an easy way.
Routes is pretty much where it's at. Remember, though, that you can subclass Route and provide your own implementation that does not use key/value URI templates.
There's nothing stopping you from writing your own solution from the ground up, but there's not much point since there's already an extensible foundation for you to work with.
Routing extensibility points
Routes
Route constraints
Route handlers
In your particular case, you will have to write your own route that will populate additional RouteData items related to host. Parsing your URL will be totally on you.
"{host}/{controller}/{action}"
Maybe also create your custom route handler that will make host parameter mandatory. But that already depends on your particular needs.
Edit
I guess that this article about domain routing may be of some help to you. It looks preety straight forward and uncompicated.
Indeed, it's impossible to reach desired flexibility since Route gives just VirtualPath portion during URL generation.
Related
I am wondering if there is any written standard on the naming of controllers in asp.net core/mvc/api?
I am not really finding anything.
Thanks
The standard is implied with REST Api Design standard.
That means if you are providing a REST point for the handling of multiple countries you would create a CountriesController which would be routed to by asp from https://localhost:443/countries/.
The convention is name it according to the route it should have, which in case of an API should be countries to conform to REST principles. However, that convention is based on utilizing a default route which simply maps whatever comes before Controller as part of the path. With attribute routing, or even simply just custom standard routing, you can make the route whatever you want, which then means that the controller could be named whatever you want, as it's no longer being utilized directly as part of the route.
Long and short, CountriesController is probably better, since it aligns better to the route it should have, but ultimately, there's no hard and fast rule here. As with most questions like this, the only answer is the one that makes the most sense for you, your team, and your application, which none of us here can dictate for you.
/controller/action/id
or
/controller/id/action
Which is more common? Which is preferable and why?
Are there any pro's / con's of using one or the other?
Edit:
Or, perhaps to think of this question in a different way, why do most MVC frameworks (ASP.Net MVC, Grails, Spring MVC) default to the /controller/action/id URL pattern? Is there some advantage to this?
Neither of these are RESTful. There should not be verbs/actions in a URL. Those are confined to the HTTP method for good reason (so that clients can interact with your service without knowing anything specific about it).
If you can not do anything except GET and POST, use POST to send an action parameter to /controller/id
Asp.Net MVC uses /controller/action/id. So that is what you'll most often see in that environment. I do not see any technical benefits but simply going with a common pattern can make things easier to understand.
I definitely prefer /controller/action/id. This feels to me more like it is identifying a resource (a noun) rather than identifying an action on that noun (a verb).
In addition to the exact URL to the resource, you need to consider how you are mapping the HTTP verbs. In my experience, we have shuffled the URL around based on what made most sense when combined with the verbs. That said, we also have a couple places we broke the canonical approach for convenience sake (for example, exposing a certain delete action with a GET so that users could perform the action via a browser).
Also take a look at this discussion for more.
REST URL structure advice
I have an application that will support multiple sites. The site will be determined based on the url.
For example
http://myapp/site/abc123/...
and
http://myapp/site/xyz123/...
The site code will drive a lot of the functionality for example themes, available modules, etc...
Questions:
1-)I need to validate the site code is valid and if it isn't, it should direct the user to an info page. I was looking at using IRouteConstraint, is this appropriate? Are there other/better options?
2-)Any gotchas with this approach (using url to identify site)? Is there are better approach?
Solution
I ended up creating a Custom ActionFilter and check the sitecode in the OnActionExecuting event. That seems to work well and fit better than the IRouteConstraint.
The system I have implemented uses Urls to identify unique page content within a single site and the routing process is pretty straightforward. That being said, you may want to consider making use of Areas in your MVC application. With Areas you can have multiple sections to your website that all have their own MVC structure which can run semi-independently.
Essentially, you will have one base routing definition that lays out some defaults and then the rest of the "sites" will define their own routes pointing to controllers and views in a separate location. It's pretty easy to set up, you'll just need to make sure you're using version 2.0 of ASP.NET MVC. Here's a decent looking tutorial on ASP.NET MVC Areas and Routes. In the current model which MVC 2.0 supports you'll have a single Web project for each area, but that is not necessarily a requirement. Phil Haacked has some code for ASP.NET MVC Single Project Areas if you're looking for another example of the technique, although you, personally, will probably benefit more from the first article.
So long as you define good routes that have clear and measurable constraints, you shouldn't have too much trouble laying out the website you've described.
I ended up creating a Custom ActionFilter and check the sitecode in the OnActionExecuting event. That seems to work well and fit better than the IRouteConstraint.
I'm currently working on an asp.net-mvc content management system. It would be incredibly useful to be able to deploy nested applications e.g. /shop to have a separate app inside. Or even another instance of the cms.
I've found some information around talking about limiting the inheritance of the web.config but I've no idea how this maps to an MVC application. I'm hoping as its essentially the same stack it will just run. Nothing is ever that easy though.
If anyone has any experience doing this I would be really grateful. The idea of one big application to rule them all is not at all nice.
Si.
To be honest you biggest hurdle is going to be creating the routes and making sure they don't interfere with routes already in the system. After you get that working the rest is easy as pie.
The first thing you will need is an HttpModule that will be inserted in to the web.config under the . This module will be used to register and custom ViewEngines or Routes that you want to register. You do this in the same way that you do in the Global.asax but instead of putting them in the Application_Start you put them in the static constructor of the HttpModule. This is so they are only loaded once like Application_Start.
By do the above you will have created a module that is easily transportable and doesn't require the implimentor to modify their Global.asax code to get your stuff to work.
The second thing you probably want to do is create a custom configuration in the web.config to set stuff like the root path of your application. This will be prepended on to the route when you are setting it up in the HttpModule. Also you can use this to store customization information that is not appropriate for the database.
Last but not necessary is that you may want to create a custom ViewEngine that knowns and understands your folder structure. This is only necessary if you want to store the views in a different path than the default views, in order to minimize conflicts.
Check out the Grouping Controllers with ASP.NET MVC from Phil Haack.
Hope it helps,
Bruno Figueiredo
I've gone down this road before (with /blog), but found it to be doable but complicated and difficult to maintain. Instead I ended up using subdomains:
www.example.com
shop.example.com
blog.example.com
These are much easier to maintain because you can just have them work as separate websites in IIS. And, of course, you can always redirect www.example.com/shop to shop.example.com.
I need your advice regarding migration. I want to migrate existing project to ASP.NET MVC and I can figure out the proccess except of url rewriting issue:
for example how can I make following route:
http://www.eireads.com/ireland/mayo/cars-3/1263-used-cars-citroen-c5-for-sale.aspx
Or maybe I could somehow keep supporting legacy routes.
I think that migrating a web forms applicaiton to MVC is going to be very hard unless you have a clear seperation of concerns in your current applicaiton. If you have followed a design pattern like MVP then it might be easier, but if not then much of your business logic is likey going to have to be moved to controller classes and much of it re-written.
I would start by extracting your model, this should be fairly easy, then identifying your controllers and actions and seeing how much code you can re-use. At this point you should be able to discern whether or not you can migrate or if you'll be better off re-writing portions of your applicaiton.
Default URL patterns in ASP.NET MVC are http(s)://(appdomain)/(controller)/(action)/(par/ame/ters)
So your url above should fit into that pattern. You can change the pattern to account for other things (like namespace for example). Your URL pattern might be:
http://www.eireads.com/cars/used/ireland/mayo/citreon
where ireland, mayo and citreon are the in put parameters.
I think you should really re-write your question and try to detail exactly what you are attempting to accomplish here.
If you are asking how to migrate an existing WebForm project into ASP.NET MVC keeping the same URL rewrite, the answer is; not easily. The models are too different.
Yet, you mention "routes" in the end, which make me think you are speaking like those of the System.Web.Routing namespace. So are you dealing with an existing MVC app and want it too look like that URL path? I can't tell. I am confused.