MVC Core: Routing for displaying detailed information in the URL

Question

Imagining an online store written in ASP.Net MVC, where I have a controller for displaying products and product details. Given the following code

public class ProductsController : Controller {

    public IActionResult Index(){
        return View(ProductList);
    }
    public IActionResult Details(String id){
        return View(FindProduct(id));
    }
}

The URL displayed in the web browser's address bar when looking up a product is something similar to this: www.onlineshop.com/Products/Details?id=1234.

I have been studding SEO and I have been thinking that it would be a better idea if I re-route the URL to something more detailed such as:

www.onlineshop.com/Products/Sony/Gaming/PlayStation/PS4Model12345

How can this be achieved in ASP.Net MVC (Core)? (given the example controller I provided)

Answer 1

The answer for this question is actually very simple. I don't know why the other users here recommended considerably lengthy solutions but in my opinion it can be carried out by adding the Route attribute on the Details API. When someone needs to display a list of products inside of a View it is very unlikely and illogical if they only display the Product Id and normally an IEnumerable<Product> is passed to the Index view in the situation asked in the question. Accordingly, the following can be done:

[Route("Products/Details/{Manufacturer=unnamed}/{Category=unnamed}/{ActualProduct=unnamed}/{Model=unnamed}/{URLTrail=unnamed}")]
public IActionResult Details(GUID id) {
    return View(FindProduct(id));
} 

Example output: www.MyOnlineShop.com/Products/Details/Microsoft/Surface/SurfacePro/xxxx-xxxx-....

Now it really does not matter if some of these URL parameters are missing but the user can have the option to render the URL as they like !.

Update:

Building the URL inside of the view is more SEO friendly as it creates reasonable links!

A better example, in case of stackoverflow, the URL for this question is

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/42472547/mvc-core-routing-for-displaying-detailed-information-in-the-url

In this example the actual question id is 42472547 and the trailing part is for SEO so that Google can search the question. In this example the following route applies:

[Route("Questions/{id}/{SEOHint}"]

and the {id} part is used for looking up the question not the {SEOHint} part.

Updated Solution

I have written the following attribute that can be customized for implementing this functionality.

public abstract class URLOptimizerAttributeBase : Attribute, IRouteTemplateProvider, IActionFilter
{
    public String Template { get; private set; }
    public int? Order { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public URLOptimizerAttributeBase(String Template) {
        this.Template = Template;
    }
    public abstract Boolean Validate(RouteData routeData);
    public abstract RedirectToRouteResult Redirect(RouteValueDictionary routeValueDictionary);
    public abstract void OnActionExecuted(ActionExecutedContext context);
    public virtual void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext context)
    {
        if (!Validate(context.RouteData))
        {
            context.Result = Redirect(context.RouteData.Values);
        }    
    }
}

The following provides an example of the implementation of this attribute.

public class URLOptimization : URLOptimizerAttributeBase
{
    private String SEOHint;
    public URLOptimization(string Template) : base(Template)
    {
    }

    public object DbContext { get; private set; }

    public override void OnActionExecuted(ActionExecutedContext context)
    {
    }
    public override bool Validate(RouteData routeData)
    {
        return routeData.Values["SEOHint"].Equals(SEOHint);
    }
    public override RedirectToRouteResult Redirect(RouteValueDictionary routeValueDictionary)
    {
        routeValueDictionary["SEOHind"] = SEOHint;
        return new RedirectToRouteResult(routeValueDictionary);
    }

    public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext context)
    {
        var id = context.RouteData.Values["Id"];
        DbContext db = (DbContext)context.HttpContext.RequestServices.GetService(typeof(DbContext));
        var product = db.Find<Products>(id);
        if (product != null)
        {
            SEOHint = product.SEOURL;
            ((Controller)context.Controller).ViewBag.Data = product;
             base.OnActionExecuting(context);
        }
        else {
            context.Result = new RedirectResult("Error Page");
        }
    }
}

And the example of using this attribute would be as follows:

[URLOptimization("Products/Details/{Id}/{SEOHint=unnamed}")]
public IActionResult Details(){
    return View(ViewBag.Data);
}