ASP.Net MVC Route to Username - asp.net-mvc

I am trying to create a route with a Username...
So the URL would be mydomain.com/abrudtkhul (abrudtkhul being the username)
My application will have public profiles based on usernames (Ex: http://delicious.com/abrudtkuhl). I want to replicate this URL scheme.
How can I structure this in ASP.Net MVC? I am using Membership/Roles Providers too.

Here's what you want to do, first define your route map:
routes.MapRoute(
"Users",
"{username}",
new { controller = "User", action="index", username=""});
What this allows you to do is to setup the following convention:
Controller: User (the UserController type)
Action: Index (this is mapped to the Index method of UserController)
Username: This is the parameter for the Index method
So when you request the url http://mydomain.com/javier this will be translated to the call for UserController.Index(string username) where username is set to the value of javier.
Now since you're planning on using the MembershipProvider classes, you want to something more like this:
public ActionResult Index(MembershipUser usr)
{
ViewData["Welcome"] = "Viewing " + usr.UserName;
return View();
}
In order to do this, you will need to use a ModelBinder to do the work of, well, binding from a username to a MembershipUser type. To do this, you will need to create your own ModelBinder type and apply it to the user parameter of the Index method. Your class can look something like this:
public class UserBinder : IModelBinder
{
public ModelBinderResult BindModel(ModelBindingContext bindingContext)
{
var request = bindingContext.HttpContext.Request;
var username = request["username"];
MembershipUser user = Membership.GetUser(username);
return new ModelBinderResult(user);
}
}
This allows you to change the declaration of the Index method to be:
public ActionResult Index([ModelBinder(typeof(UserBinder))]
MembershipUser usr)
{
ViewData["Welcome"] = "Viewing " + usr.Username;
return View();
}
As you can see, we've applied the [ModelBinder(typeof(UserBinder))] attribute to the method's parameter. This means that before your method is called the logic of your UserBinder type will be called so by the time the method gets called you will have a valid instance of your MembershipUser type.

You might want to consider not allowing usernames of certain types if you want to have some other functional controllers like Account, Admin, Profile, Settings, etc. Also you might want your static content not to trigger the "username" route. In order to achieve that kind of functionality (similar to how twitter urls are processed) you could use the following Routes:
// do not route the following
routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");
routes.IgnoreRoute("content/{*pathInfo}");
routes.IgnoreRoute("images/{*pathInfo}");
// route the following based on the controller constraints
routes.MapRoute(
"Default", // Route name
"{controller}/{action}/{id}", // URL with parameters
new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = "" } // Parameter defaults
, new { controller = #"(admin|help|profile|settings)" } // Constraints
);
// this will catch the remaining allowed usernames
routes.MapRoute(
"Users",
"{username}",
new { controller = "Users", action = "View", username = "" }
);
Then you will need to have a controller for each of the tokens in the constraint string (e.g. admin, help, profile, settings), as well as a controller named Users, and of course the default controller of Home in this example.
If you have a lot of usernames you don't want to allow, then you might consider a more dynamic approach by creating a custom route handler.

You could have a route that looks like:
{username}
with the defaults of
Controller = "Users"
For the finished product of:
routes.MapRoute(
"Users",
"{username}",
new { controller = "Users" }
So that the Username is the only url parameter, the MVC assumes it passes it to the users controller.

Are you trying to pass it as a parameter to a Controller?
Theoretically you could do something like this:
routes.MapRoute("name", "{user}/{controller}/{action}", new { controller = "blah", action = "blah", user = "" })
I'm not too experienced with ASP.NET routing, but I figure that should work.

routes.MapRoute(
"Users",
"{username}",
new { controller = "Users", action="ShowUser", username=""});
Ok, what this will do is default the username parameter to the value of {username}
so even though you've written username="" it'll know to pass the value of {username} .. by virtue of the strings match.
This would expect
for the url form
http://website.com/username
Users Contoller
ShowUser Action (method in controller)
username parameter on the ShowUser action (method)

Related

How can map an asp.net MVC route with more than 3 components?

I'm trying to learn asp.net mvc, and almost everywhere I see route description with three components like /Controller/Action/{anyParams}
I'd like to know if I can map a route similar to,
/Folder(or namespace)/Controller/Action/params...
ex:
/Admin/Student/Edit/id
/ABC/Faculty/Add/`
/XYZ/Student/Edit/id
or in general,
/XYZ/Controller1/Action/{param}
Yep the second parameter in the MapRoutes function (usually in Global.asax.cs is Url and this can be any pattern you want. something like
routes.MapRoute("MyRoute", "XYZ/Controller1/Action/{param}",
new {controller = "Controller1", action = "Action"}});
should do the trick.
You can make your routes as complex as you want.
F.e. the following route:
routes.MapRoute("some-route", "products/detail/order/{id}/{name}/",
new { controller = "Products", action = "Order" },
new { id = "^\d+" });
will route to the following function:
public class ProductsController : Controller {
public ActionResult Order (int id, string name) {
}
}
So you can specify as many parameters as you want, and they will be passed into your action as function parameters.

ASP.NET routing - avoiding clashes between controller/action and vanity/slug urls

I'm looking for a good solution to having a URL scheme that works for both standard ASP.NET MVC controller/action urls eg:
/Home/About --> Controller "Home", Action "About"
and vanity/slug urls eg:
/fred/post --> Controller "Posts", Action "View", User "fred", Post "post"
Importantly, I want the outbound url generation to work so that
Html.ActionLink("View", "Posts", new { User="fred", Post="post" }, null }
gives /fred/post - not /Posts/View/fred/post
It seems, I can get it to work for either inbound or outbound routing but not both. Or I can get it sort of working but it's messy and prone to breaking. What approaches, tips and tricks are there to getting something like this working cleanly?
I finally came up with the solution of using a routing constraint that can check if a parameter matches (or doesn't match) the name of a controller:
public class ControllerConstraint : IRouteConstraint
{
static List<string> ControllerNames = (from t in System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetTypes()
where typeof(IController).IsAssignableFrom(t) && t.Name.EndsWith("Controller")
select t.Name.Substring(0, t.Name.Length - 10).ToLower()).ToList();
bool m_bIsController;
public ControllerConstraint(bool IsController)
{
m_bIsController = IsController;
}
public bool Match(HttpContextBase httpContext, Route route, string parameterName, RouteValueDictionary values, RouteDirection routeDirection)
{
if (m_bIsController)
return ControllerNames.Contains(values[parameterName].ToString().ToLower());
else
return !ControllerNames.Contains(values[parameterName].ToString().ToLower());
}
}
Use like this:
// eg: /myusername
routes.MapRoute(
"MemberUrl",
"{member_urlid}",
new { controller = "Members", action = "View" },
new { action="View", member_urlid = new ControllerConstraint(false) }
);
// eg: /myusername/mypagename
routes.MapRoute(
"ItemUrl",
"{member_urlid}/{item_urlid}",
new { controller = "Items", action = "View" },
new { action="View", member_urlid = new ControllerConstraint(false) }
);
// Normal controller/action routes follow
The constraint new ControllerConstraint(false) means don't match this routing rule if the parameter matches the name of a controller. Pass true to make the constraint check that the parameter does match a controller name.

Options for handling postbacks in ASP.NET MVC

Currently the way I am handling postbacks in ASP.NET MVC is to grab the input variables using:
string username = "";
if (null != Request["username"])
username = Request["username"].ToString();
I then would run a regex on the variable to ensure it was valid.
Is there any other method for doing this?
You can handle the form inputs in your Action this way:
public ActionResult Create(string username)
{
// use
}
but you need to set your Route:
routes.MapRoute(
"Default", // Route name
"Create/{username}", // URL with parameters
new { controller = "YourController", action = "Create", username = "" } // Parameter defaults
);
Or you can use ModelBinders
ASP.NET MVC does Request-To-Object mapping automatically, through ModelBinders. An older article is here, under "Form Post and Model Binder Improvements", and there is a video here.

path_prefix for asp.net mvc routes

I read this article about how you can prefix routes in ruby on rails. I want to be able to do the same thing with asp.net mvc
So I want to be able to define a route like :
/photographers/1/photos/2 //photo 2 of photographer with id 1
/photographers/1/photos //all of photographer with id 1
Any tips ?
EDIT:
"photographers/{id}/photos/{photoID}" - seems to do the job quite ok, BUT how can I support
RedirectToAction<PhotosController>(x => x.Add());
I would like to redirect to : /photographers/1/photos/add
Define your route like this:
routes.MapRoute(
"Photographers",
"photographers/{id}/photos/{photoID}",
new { controller = "Photographers", action = "Photo", photoID = null });
Then define your controller action like this:
public ActionResult Photo(int id, int? photoID)
{
// If photoID is not null, show just that photo.
// Otherwise, show all photographs.
}
You could use regex routing or use wildcards in your routing table so that the {id*} matches the /1/photos/2 for the photographers default controller, parse the string, and redirect to an appropriate action.
Also take a look at this post about nested resources.
RouteTable.Routes.Add(
new Route { Url = "events/[eventId]/tickets/[action]/[id]",
Defaults = new { controller = "Tickets",
action = "List", id = (string)null },
RouteHandler = typeof(MvcRouteHandler) });

Having issues with MVC Routing

I'm trying to implement routing such as the following:
posts/535434/This-is-a-post-title
posts/tagged/tags+here
// Matches {controller}/{action}/{id} - Default
// Displays all posts with the specified tags
// uses PostsController : ActionTagged(string tags)
posts?pageSize=50&pageIndex=4
// Matches {controller}/{action}/{id} - Default
// Displays all posts
// uses PostsController : Index(int? pageSize, int? pageIndex)
Here's the problem I want to do this:
posts/39423/this-is-a-post-title-here
// Typically this is implemented using an action like 'Details'
// and would normally look like : posts/details/5
I can't seem to get the routing working right. I tried something like this:
{controller}/{id}/{description}
and set the default action to be "Display" which works, but then won't allow me to navigate to other named actions like "Tagged".
What am I missing?
Thanks!
Two things:
First, you should always order your routes in decreasing specificity (e.g. most specific case first, least specific case last) so that routes will "fall through", if one doesn't match it will try the next.
So we want to define {controller}/{postid}/... (must be a postid) before we define {controller}/{action}/... (could be anything else)
Next, we want to be able to specify that if the provided value for postid does not look like a Post ID, the route should fail and fall through to the next one. We can do this by creating an IRouteConstraint class:
public class PostIDConstraint : IRouteConstraint
{
public bool Match(HttpContextBase httpContext,
Route route,
string parameterName,
RouteValueDictionary values,
RouteDirection routeDirection)
{
//if input looks like a post id, return true.
//otherwise, false
}
}
We can add it to the route definition like so:
routes.MapRoute(
"Default",
"{controller}/{postid}/{description}",
new { controller = "Posts", action = "Display", id = 0 },
new { postid = new PostIDConstraint() }
);
I'm not 100% I understand your question, but it sounds like you can just define a couple different routes.
routes.MapRoute("PostId", "posts/{id}/{title}",
new { Controller = "Posts", Action = "DisplayPost", id = 0, title = "" },
new { id = #"\d+" });
routes.MapRoute("TaggedPosts", "posts/tagged/{tags}",
new { Controller = "Posts", Action = "DisplayTagged", tags = "" });
routes.MapRoute("Default", "posts",
new { Controller = "Posts", Action = "Index" });
You can use regular expressions to validate parameters like I used for id in the first route, or if you want some better validation do something like Rex M posted. The querystring parameters pageSize and pageIndex don't need to be included in your route; they will just be passed in to your Index method as long as the parameter names match.
The part of the url that's the "description" actually isn't used.
For example, this post is 519222 and I can still get to it using the url: Having issues with MVC Routing

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