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Based on my SEO team's recommendation i am trying to generate SEO friendly urls. For some static pages i have done that easily using RouteCollection.MapRoute() like - 

//Home/Solutions
routes.MapRoute("Solutions", "Solutions", new { controller = "Home", action = "Solutions" }, new[] { "MyAuction.Controllers" });

//Home/SolutionOfferings
routes.MapRoute("Offerings", "Offerings", new { controller = "Home", action = "SolutionOfferings" }, new[] { "MyAuction.Controllers" });

//Home/Pricing
routes.MapRoute("Pricing", "Pricing", new { controller = "Home", action = "Pricing" }, new[] { "MyAuction.Controllers" });

I was then trying to generate SEO friendly routes for my dynamic routes. For example there are several auctions scheduled for a day which contains hundreds of vehicles scheduled within the auction. To show details of that scheduled vehicle within the auction the actual URL is somewhat -

http://example.com/Auction/VehicleDetails?AuctionId=42&VehicleId=101 Please note that VehicleId represents the Identity within AuctionVehicles table which also contains other details of the vehicle like Make, Model, Year and VIN etc.

What i want to achieve is to generate a dynamic URL like -

http://example.com/42/honda-civic-2010-123456

where 42 is the auction id while honda is the make, civic is the model, 2010 is the year and 123456 is the last 6 digits of the VIN number.

Not sure how to achieve this.

I tried using this link - Dynamic Routes from database for ASP.NET MVC CMS

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Community
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IrfanRaza
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  • Your SEO team needs a refresher course. The idea of "SEO-friendly" routes came about because websites were loading everything under *one single document*, with URLs like `index.asp?page=foo` and `index.asp?page=bar`. This does not apply at all to your scenario here. Query strings are perfectly OK, and a route like you have is *already* SEO-friendly. – Chris Pratt Mar 06 '17 at 14:57
  • Hi can you give me a tick if my answer was correct. – Harry Jun 12 '17 at 10:29

1 Answers1

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Routing is one of the most difficult things to grasp in mvc. The best way i have found is MVC attribute routings in ASP.NET MVC 5. (P.s. i'm typing on a phone)

you simply include this line in your RouteConfig

 routes.MapMvcAttributeRoutes();

And then you can set optional parameters and default values and map urls in your actual controllers like this:

 [Route("books/{bookName?}")]
 public ActionResult View(string bookName)
 {
      if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(bookName)
      {
           return View("OneBooks"), GetBooks(bookName));
      }
      return View("AllBooks"), GetBooks());
 }

Your url will look like www.example.com/books/jungle-book

there are many more things you can do. Please read the following article:

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/webdev/2013/10/17/attribute-routing-in-asp-net-mvc-5/

I also found this links and the sublinks on this page to be helpfull to get a proper understanding of mvc routing (lots of reading!!):

https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/641783/Customizing-Routes-in-ASP-NET-MVC

As I said I think attribute routing is your best bet!

Harry
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