Changing ASP.NET MVC 3 controller routing behavior

Question

Let's say I have a few controllers with long names like VeryLongNameController.

By default ASP.NET MVC3 will map ~/VeryLongName or ~/verylongname to this controller. However I don't like the use of capital names within the URL and would like it to map all long named controllers like ~/very-long-name instead.

I know that it's possible to add custom routes one by one, but is there a way to change the default behavior?

out of curiosity, what scenarios would a URI be off like this that you would change it for? — Adam Tuliper
– Adam Tuliper, Commented May 26, 2011 at 14:55
It's just mainly for cosmetics, where I want the URIs to not contain capital letters and also be more readable . i.e. /a-controller-with-long-name instead of /AControllerWithLongName. I was curious if it was possible at all. — Can Gencer
– Can Gencer, Commented May 26, 2011 at 14:59
I added an answer below - unfortunately this only applies to the action name - if that helps at all — Adam Tuliper
– Adam Tuliper, Commented May 26, 2011 at 15:09

Lazarus · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-26 14:20:00Z

4

You can, you need to provide your own route handler implementing IRouterHandler, there's a good example here.

answered May 26, 2011 at 14:20

Lazarus

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Adam Tuliper · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-26 15:08:53Z

0

You can use an ActionName attribute specifically for an action method.. not a controller though

[ActionName("an-action-with-long-name")]
public ActionResult AnActionWithLongName() {
  // ...
}

Also - I prefer to add a route for every controller/action method so I don't create any unexpected mappings (I unit test them as well too) - so this is one thing to consider.

answered May 26, 2011 at 15:08

Adam Tuliper

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1 Comment

Can Gencer Over a year ago

actually this is exactly what I want to avoid, not to have to define it individually for each controller or action. :)

Can Gencer · Accepted Answer · 2011-06-27 07:57:22Z

I've investigated this a bit more, and got it working by making my own IHttpHandler and IRouteHandler, looking at the source for System.Web.Mvc.MvcHandler and System.Web.Mvc.MvcRouteHandler and basically copying and pasting and replacing how it resolves the controller name. However I don't like this approach at all, as it feels too heavy-weight to redo the whole request processing pipe for a simple cosmetic task. Thus, I will go with adding manual routes for each controller which has two names (which there aren't that many).

UPDATE: I've come with a much simpler solution, and that is done through overriding ControllerFactory .

public class ControllerFactory : DefaultControllerFactory
{
    public override IController CreateController(RequestContext requestContext, 
        string controllerName)
    {
        requestContext.RouteData.Values["action"] =
            requestContext.RouteData.Values["action"].ToString().Replace("-", "");
        return base.CreateController(requestContext, controllerName.Replace("-",""));
    }
}

My blog post about it: http://cangencer.wordpress.com/2011/05/27/better-looking-urls-in-asp-net-mvc-3/

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