vb.net code 128 font Extending the routing system in Visual Studio .NET

Print Code 128A in Visual Studio .NET Extending the routing system

The UrlRoutingModule is an implementation of IHttpModule and represents the entry point into the ASP.NET MVC Framework. This module examines each request, builds up the RouteData for the request, finds an appropriate IRouteHandler for the given route matched, and finally redirects the request to the IRouteHandler s IHttpHandler. In any ASP.NET MVC application, the default route looks like the one in listing 24.1. The MapRoute method is a simplified way of specifying routes.

routes.MapRoute("default", "{controller}/{action}/{id}", new { Controller="home", Action="index", id=UrlParameter.Optional});

Most of the applications you ll work with will use this style of adding routes. There s also a more verbose method, which allows us to customize the classes that are used as part of the route. Listing 24.2 shows the same route but without using the MapRoute helper method.

routes.Add(new Route("{controller}/{action}/{id}", new RouteValueDictionary(new { Controller = "home", Action = "index", Specifies route id = UrlParameter.Optional }), handler new MvcRouteHandler() ));

That third argument in listing 24.2 B tells the framework which IRouteHandler to use for this route. We re using the built-in MvcRouteHandler that ships with the framework. This class is used by default when we call the MapRoute method, but we can change this to a custom route handler and take control in interesting ways. An IRouteHandler is responsible for creating an appropriate IHttpHandler to handle the request, given the details of the request. This is a good place to change the way routing works, or perhaps to gain control extremely early in the request pipeline. The MvcRouteHandler simply constructs an MvcHandler to handle a request, passing it a RequestContext, which contains the RouteData and an HttpContextBase. A quick example will help illustrate the need for a custom route handler. When defining our routes, we ll sometimes run across errors. Let s assume we ve defined the route shown in listing 24.3.

routes.MapRoute("CategoryRoute", "{category}/{action}", new { Controller = "Products", Action="index" });

Here we ve added a new custom route at the top position that will accept URLs like /apparel/index, use the ProductsController, and call the Index action on it, passing in the category as a parameter to the action, as shown in listing 24.4. Listing 24.4 is a good example of a custom route that makes our URLs more readable.

public class ProductsController : Controller { public ActionResult Index(string category) { return View(); } }

Now, let s assume that we have another controller, HomeController, which has an Index action to show the start page, as shown in listing 24.5.

public class HomeController : Controller { public ActionResult Index() { return View(); } }

We d like the URL for the action in listing 24.4 to look like /home/index; but if we try this URL, we ll get a 404 error, as shown in figure 24.1. Why The problem isn t apparent from that error message. We certainly have a controller called HomeController, and it has an action method called Index. If we dig deep into the routes, we can deduce that this URL was picked up by the first route, {category}/{action}, which wasn t what we intended. We should be able to quickly identify a routing mismatch so that we can fix it speedily.

Figure 24.1 This message doesn t tell us much about what s wrong. An action couldn t be found on the controller, but which one

With many custom routes, it s easy for a URL to be caught by the wrong route. It d be nice if we had a diagnostic tool to display which routes are being matched (and used) so we could quickly catch these types of errors.

To see the route rules as they re matched at runtime, we can add a special query string parameter that we can tack onto the end of the URL. This will signify that instead of rendering the regular view, our custom route debugger should instead circumvent the request and provide a simple HTML view of the route information. The current route information is stored in an object called RouteData, available to us in the IRouteHandler interface. The route handler is also the first to get control of the request, so it s a great place to intercept and alter the behavior for any route, as shown in listing 24.6.