new to asp.net mvc (using v3 + razor) and am wondering how to best solve a problem with creating dynamic routes based on a database. Essentially, the main site navigation will be entered into a database and I want to load them up as routes. i.e. - Load Category list from database, then append the routes to the routing engine if possible...
mysite.com/cars mysite.com/televisions mysite.com/computers
etc....
Each category after the slash comes from the db, but, there are regular entries like /about and /contactus that will not be in the database and have been statically entered in the global.asax... my question is:
For the dynamic database URLs should I use a custom RouteHandler or pehaps create a ControllerFactory that will match and handle the requests for the entries loaded from the database. Is it possible to have the DefaultControllerFactory handle the routing if my RouteHandler or CustomControllerFactory don't find the route in the list from the database? Thanks for any help, very first project with this so I'm not sure what the best route is ;) no pun intended...
Update:
Tried using a route constraint that pulls from the database but it conflicts with the default route now... here is my custom constraint and routes:
public class CategoryListConstraint : IRouteConstraint
{
public CategoryListConstraint()
{
var repo = new Repository<Topic>();
var cats = repo.All();
var values = new List<string>();
foreach (var c in cats)
{
values.Add(c.URI.Replace("/", "").Replace("?", ""));
}
this._values = values.ToArray<string>();
}
private string[] _values;
public bool Match(HttpContextBase httpContext,
Route route,
string parameterName,
RouteValueDictionary values,
RouteDirection routeDirection)
{
// Get the value called "parameterName" from the
// RouteValueDictionary called "value"
string value = values[parameterName].ToString();
// Return true is the list of allowed values contains
// this value.
return _values.Contains(value);
}
}
and here are the routes:
Routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");
routes.MapRoute(
"Categories",
"{category}/{*values}",
new { controller = "Category", action = "List" },
new CategoryListConstraint()
);
Routes.MapRoute(
"Default", // Route name
"{controller}/{action}/{id}", // URL with parameters
new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults
);
The home page www.mysite.com loads using the Default route. All the URLs that match the constraint list are loaded by the category route... but if I have the www.mysite.com/admin or www.mysite.com/aboutus these are getting picked up by the Categories route even though the values are not in the constraint list. Confused...