I want to set up a ASP.NET MVC route that looks like:
routes.MapRoute(
"Default", // Route name
"{controller}/{action}/{idl}", // URL with parameters
new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", idl = UrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults
);
That routes requests that look like this...
Example/GetItems/1,2,3
...to my controller action:
public class ExampleController : Controller
{
public ActionResult GetItems(List<int> id_list)
{
return View();
}
}
The question is, what do I set up to transform the idl
url parameter from a string
into List<int>
and call the appropriate controller action?
I have seen a related question here that used OnActionExecuting
to preprocess a string, but did not change the type. I don't think that will work for me here, because when I override OnActionExecuting
in my controller and inspect the ActionExecutingContext
parameter, I see that the ActionParameters
dictionary already has an idl
key with a null value- presumably, an attempted cast from string to List<int>
... this is the part of the routing I want to be in control of.
Is this possible?
A nice version is to implement your own Model Binder. You can find a sample here
I try to give you an idea:
public class MyListBinder : IModelBinder
{
public object BindModel(ControllerContext controllerContext, ModelBindingContext bindingContext)
{
string integers = controllerContext.RouteData.Values["idl"] as string;
string [] stringArray = integers.Split(',');
var list = new List<int>();
foreach (string s in stringArray)
{
list.Add(int.Parse(s));
}
return list;
}
}
public ActionResult GetItems([ModelBinder(typeof(MyListBinder))]List<int> id_list)
{
return View();
}
Like slfan's says, a custom model binder is the way to go. Here's a another approach from my blog which is generic and supports multiples data types. It also elegantly falls back to default the model binding implementation:
public class CommaSeparatedValuesModelBinder : DefaultModelBinder
{
private static readonly MethodInfo ToArrayMethod = typeof(Enumerable).GetMethod("ToArray");
protected override object GetPropertyValue(ControllerContext controllerContext, ModelBindingContext bindingContext, System.ComponentModel.PropertyDescriptor propertyDescriptor, IModelBinder propertyBinder)
{
if (propertyDescriptor.PropertyType.GetInterface(typeof(IEnumerable).Name) != null)
{
var actualValue = bindingContext.ValueProvider.GetValue(propertyDescriptor.Name);
if (actualValue != null && !String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(actualValue.AttemptedValue) && actualValue.AttemptedValue.Contains(","))
{
var valueType = propertyDescriptor.PropertyType.GetElementType() ?? propertyDescriptor.PropertyType.GetGenericArguments().FirstOrDefault();
if (valueType != null && valueType.GetInterface(typeof(IConvertible).Name) != null)
{
var list = (IList)Activator.CreateInstance(typeof(List<>).MakeGenericType(valueType));
foreach (var splitValue in actualValue.AttemptedValue.Split(new[] { ',' }))
{
list.Add(Convert.ChangeType(splitValue, valueType));
}
if (propertyDescriptor.PropertyType.IsArray)
{
return ToArrayMethod.MakeGenericMethod(valueType).Invoke(this, new[] { list });
}
else
{
return list;
}
}
}
}
return base.GetPropertyValue(controllerContext, bindingContext, propertyDescriptor, propertyBinder);
}
}