How can I achieve clean URL routing with custom user ID?

Question

My ASP.NET MVC site allows users to register and give themselves user names, which will be unique and allow others to browse their pages with a clean URL that includes their name, like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. do.

For example:

mysite.com/michael.guthrie
mysite.com/john
mysite.com/john/images
mysite.com/john/blog

etc.

The problem is that the first URL segment might be used for other "regular" controllers/actions, like:

mysite.com/about
mysite.com/register

So basically I seek for a routing scheme that says something like: If the first URL segment is a known controller, treat it as a controller (and parse the relevant action and parameters as usual), but if not - treat it as a user name, and pass it to a dedicated controller+action which will parse it and continue accordingly.

I don't want a solution that will enforce me to add routes for every specific controller that I have, such that after the routing module will go over all of them and won't find a match, it will get to the last one which defines a route for this special user name segment. The reason is primarily maintenance (I must remember to add a route every time I code a new controller, for example.)

I assume I can implement my own MvcRouteHandler / IRouteHandler but I feel there must be simpler solution that won't have me tweak MVC's out-of-the-box routing mechanism.

Note: I've read How to achieve nice litle USER page url like facebook or twitter? and it doesn't answer my question, it's just says that there is a URL rewriting module.

Do you know any good, elegant, clean way to achieve that?

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:19

2

You should have your first route be your Usesr route, with a route constraint along the lines of what I described in this answer: MVC routing question.

If your route is in the form {username}/{controller}/{id}, this route should cover all contingencies.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:19

Community

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answered Aug 28 '11 at 13:39

counsellorben

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Your answer is a big step towards what I need. The main problem is that every route analyzing is a "whitelisting" which involves an expensive database hit. I believe that the right solution should be "blacklisting" - i.e. if the route does not match any known controller/action in my app, then I assume it is a username and proceed accordingly. The question is how to elegantly know what are all my controllers and actions without the need to add a route entry every time I add controllers or so. – Ofer Zelig Aug 28 '11 at 14:12
I've got some interesting idea which is a twist over the last link you've sent. When I'll implement it I will post it here. In the mean time I set your answer as accepted - Thank you! – Ofer Zelig Aug 28 '11 at 15:25
You could adapt the answer described here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/790464/accessing-the-list-of-controllers-actions-in-an-asp-net-mvc-application. However, if someone mistypes a controller name, then you will end up in your "Users" route. Also, I think the expense of the reflection to determine the list of all actions and controllers (followed by the need to determine whether the username entered is valid) makes for a solution which is more costly overall. – counsellorben Aug 28 '11 at 15:26

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:04

in the global.asax file you can map your routes in the registerRoutes() method you can do something like this:

routes.MapRoute(
                "ToonStudenten", // Route name
                "{controller}/{action}/{userID}, // URL with parameters
                new { controller = "Docent", action = "ToonStudenten", userID = UrlParameter.Optional} // Parameter defaults
            );

I believe you can change the way your views look with this mapRouting, not entirely sure how though.. will try and search it up

You may want to take a look at this post: MVC 3 keeping short url

You don't need to set a route for each URL. With a little help from route constraints you can do something like this:

routes.MapRoute(
    "Home", // Route name
    "{action}", // URL with parameters
    new { controller = "Home", action = "Index" }, // Parameter defaults
    new { action = "TaskA|TaskB|TaskC|etc" } //Route constraints
);

routes.MapRoute(
    "Account", // Route name
    "{action}", // URL with parameters
    new { controller = "Account", action = "Logon" }, // Parameter defaults
    new { action = "Logon|Logoff|Profile|FAQs|etc" } //Route constraints
);

currently doing a mvc3 project so I'd love to be able to do this too! — Karel-Jan Misseghers, Aug 28 '11 at 12:37
I've added a link to another post, more something like that? — Karel-Jan Misseghers, Aug 28 '11 at 12:41
Doesn't apply for my case. What they suggest is what I wanted to avoid, as I explained in my question - the need to add more routes every time I have a new controller (same for maintaining existing routes by adding constraints for example). — Ofer Zelig, Aug 28 '11 at 12:48

How can I achieve clean URL routing with custom user ID?

2 Answers2