ASP.NET MVC route returning 404 without action

Question

I am working on a very simple application, using MVC2 Preview 1.

I have a controller named ContentController. My problem is that /Content/Index works correctly, but /Content/ returns a 404. I am running the application on the Studio Development Server.

Tested with RouteDebugger but /Content/ returns a 404, and does not display any debugging information.

I have not changed the routing code:

       routes.MapRoute(
            "Default",                                              // Route name
            "{controller}/{action}/{id}",                           // URL with parameters
            new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = "" }  // Parameter defaults
        );

This is my controller:

public class ContentController : Controller
{
    IRepository _repo = new SimpleRepository("db", SimpleRepositoryOptions.RunMigrations);

    public ActionResult Index()
    {
        var content = _repo.GetPaged<Content>(0, 20);
        return View(content);
    }

Are you running this under IIS or the visual web server? If IIS, which version? Do you get the same result with /Content (vs. /Content/)? — Paul Stovell
– Paul Stovell, Commented Nov 13, 2009 at 23:39
Hm... That's odd. Can you post a screenshot of the routing debugger output= — Tomas Aschan
– Tomas Aschan, Commented Nov 13, 2009 at 23:39
I am running this on the built in web server provided by Visual Studio 2008. — bq1990
– bq1990, Commented Nov 14, 2009 at 2:07

Bernard Chen · Accepted Answer · 2009-11-13 23:47:20Z

7

It's a shot in the dark, but do you have a directory named /Content/ as well?

answered Nov 13, 2009 at 23:47

Bernard Chen

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2 Comments

bq1990 Over a year ago

Bingo! Turns out the MVC template creates a directory named Content where it puts the Site.css file. Now i feel like an idiot :( Thanks so much for everyone's help!

programad Over a year ago

Same here. But my code created a folder with the same name of a controller.

reach4thelasers · Accepted Answer · 2009-11-13 23:56:01Z

1

/Content is a controller, which is basically just a collection of actions. ASP.NET MVC needs to know WHICH action you want to run, so by leaving out the action asp.net mvc doesn't know what action to return and gives a 404.

You can tell it a default either by adding a route:

eg:

routes.MapRoute("ContentDefault", "Content", new {controller = "Content", action = "Index"});

The attributes are defined as follows:

'ContentDefault`: Name of the Route (must be unique in your routing table)

Content: The URL segment (try changing this to 'Content/Much/Longer/URL' and then go to http://localhost/Content/Much/Longer/URL to see how this works)

new {controller=.., action=...}: which controller/action combo to run for this route.

You could also override HandleUnknownAction in your controller:

    protected override void HandleUnknownAction(string actionName)
    {
         return RedirectToAction("index");
    }

Oh and incidentally, an extra piece of advice about routing.... if you add something to the route in braces { } these will be passed to the action as an attribute.

e.g. /Content/Much/Longer/Url/{page}

so the URL http://localhost/Content/Much/Longer/Url/999

will pass the 999 into your action, as the page attribute

public ActionResult Index(int Page) { }

I love MVC - never going back to WebForms - this is how web development should be!

edited Nov 13, 2009 at 23:56

answered Nov 13, 2009 at 23:44

reach4thelasers

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1 Comment

bq1990 Over a year ago

Thanks for the info, this is very specific to what I am working on.

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