Asp.net-mvc – make ASP.NET MVC Html.RouteLink() return a url for the home page without an ID

asp.net-mvchtml-helperroutingurl-routing

I've got a single route in my Global.asax.vb page like this…

Shared Sub RegisterRoutes(ByVal routes As RouteCollection)
    routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}")
    routes.MapRoute( _
        "IdOnly", _
        "{id}", _
        New With {.controller = "Page", _
                  .action = "Details", _
                  .id = "7"} _
    )
End Sub

That id is for my home page. It's displayed when someone navigates to my: http://example.com/

But, this also works: http://example.com/7

I'd like to have no links anywhere on my site to the address with id of 7. But, the Html.RouteLink() function generates those.

For a view Model that's a child of the home page…

<%=Html.RouteLink(Model.Parent.Title, _
                  "IdOnly", _
                  New With {.id = Model.Parent.Id})%>

…generates the following anchor tag:

<a href="/7">Home</a>

How can I override the href generated by the Html.RouteLink() function for my home page?

Best Answer

Add a new route before your "IdOnly" route for the home page:

routes.MapRoute( _
    "HomePage", _
    "", _
    New With {.controller = "Page", _
              .action = "Details", _
              .id = "7"} _
)

RouteLink will use the first matched mapping in the routing table to generate the link.

Related Solutions

Asp.net-mvc – Can an ASP.NET MVC controller return an Image

Use the base controllers File method.

public ActionResult Image(string id)
{
    var dir = Server.MapPath("/Images");
    var path = Path.Combine(dir, id + ".jpg"); //validate the path for security or use other means to generate the path.
    return base.File(path, "image/jpeg");
}

As a note, this seems to be fairly efficient. I did a test where I requested the image through the controller (http://localhost/MyController/Image/MyImage) and through the direct URL (http://localhost/Images/MyImage.jpg) and the results were:

MVC: 7.6 milliseconds per photo
Direct: 6.7 milliseconds per photo

Note: this is the average time of a request. The average was calculated by making thousands of requests on the local machine, so the totals should not include network latency or bandwidth issues.

Json – ASP.NET MVC controller actions that return JSON or partial html

In your action method, return Json(object) to return JSON to your page.

public ActionResult SomeActionMethod() {
  return Json(new {foo="bar", baz="Blech"});
}

Then just call the action method using Ajax. You could use one of the helper methods from the ViewPage such as

<%= Ajax.ActionLink("SomeActionMethod", new AjaxOptions {OnSuccess="somemethod"}) %>

SomeMethod would be a javascript method that then evaluates the Json object returned.

If you want to return a plain string, you can just use the ContentResult:

public ActionResult SomeActionMethod() {
    return Content("hello world!");
}

ContentResult by default returns a text/plain as its contentType.
This is overloadable so you can also do:

return Content("<xml>This is poorly formatted xml.</xml>", "text/xml");

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Asp.net-mvc – Can an ASP.NET MVC controller return an Image

Json – ASP.NET MVC controller actions that return JSON or partial html

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