We Keep Coding

ActionLink and relative path

I can't find out how to solve this. I have two URLs. These are /my-url-1 and /my-url-2. Both going to different views.
The thing is that I have an ActionLink on /my-url-1's view which should make /my-url-2 and go to that view.
The problem is that ActionLink makes /my-url-1/my-url-2 as the URL and not just /my-url-2.
I was searching two days about how to fix it but couldn't find anything.
PD: I'm not using Areas so please don't tell me that I just should put the "area" parameter as a "".
These are two urls which goes to different controllers and different actions.
View which has the ActionLink (URL:/my-url-1) :
<div class="btn-index-container">
#Html.ActionLink("Url 2", "MyAction", "MyController")
</div>
This ActionLink should render:
Url 2
But it's rendering:
Url 2
where /my-url-1 is my current URL
Route Config
routes.MapRoute(
name: "route1",
url: "my-url-2", //without parameters
defaults: new { controller = "MyController", action = "MyAction" },
);
routes.MapRoute(
name: "route2",
url: "my-url-1", //without parameters too
defaults: new { controller = "MyController2", action = "MyAction2" }
);
So, when I go to localhost:port/my-url-1 it loads MyAction2 which renders a view. This view has inside an ActionLink(described above) which should render a /my-url-2 link.

Well, I've worked inside the MVC framework and I could told you about how Url.RouteUrl or Html.RouteLink works. At the end, the method which create the URL is GetVirtualPathForArea (this method is called before UrlUtil.GenerateClientUrl, which receive the VirtualPathData.cs created by GetVirtualPathForArea, as a parameter) from System.Web.Routing.RouteCollection.cs.
Here I left a link to the MVC source code:
https://github.com/aspnet/AspNetWebStack/blob/master/src/System.Web.Mvc
I found that, my Request.ApplicationPath was changing when I loaded /my-url-1. It was crazy because the application path was /.
At last, the problem was that the /my-url-1 was pointing to a virtual directory created on the IIS some time ago by error.
To know where your IIS configuration file is, please follow the link below:
remove virtual directory in IIS Express created in error
The solution was remove the .vs directory (which contains the config .vs\config\applicationhost.config) and rebuild
I think most of the Helpers that render URLs works more or less in the same way, so I hope it'll useful for all of you!

In your case, maybe no its necesary, just pass the parameters with null values, E.G.
#Html.ActionLink("Español", null, null, new { Lng = "es" }, null)
In this way, the parameters change, and the view is relative, depending on where you are.

MVC manipulate URL (routing), is it possible?

I have a website that use this pattern.
http://www.domain.com/product/...
My question is now, i need to create a subsite that going to be with this URL pattern, i have tried to change the routing without success.
http://www.domain.com/companyname/product/...
How can i inject the companyname in the URL without breaking my current routing?
Thanks
Niden

Three ways:
If it's relatively static, you can follow Andy's advice in the comments and publish the site in a virtual directory, companyname. Assuming you've properly used the UrlHelper extensions to generate URLs, instead of just hard-coding paths, then everything will just work.
You can create a "companyname" area. The default routing for an area is /area/controller/action. So that would get you the URL structure you want. However, areas are somewhat segregated, so you would need to copy controllers and views to the area's directory. Although, you could subclass controllers from the main app in the area to reuse code.
Just change the default route/add a new route:
routes.MapRoute(
"CompanyDefault",
"{company}/{controller}/{action}/{id}",
new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = "" }
);
// default route here

asp.net MVC secure root folder only for authorized users

I am having this small extranet service where users can log in, get all sorts of info and download few files.
Is it possible to secure root folder in MVC asp.net project? I am having a project where users have to log in before using any material. How ever if I use for example "/material" folder for every pdf, jpg, etc. files, other unauthorized users can see those files also.
For example everybody can see this file if they type www.example.com/material/pdf-file.pdf So I want only authorized / logged users to see this file. Is this possible?

I managed to get it work. Here is how I did it.
The first I added this line to Web.config file:
<system.webServer>
<modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true">
This allows dot chars in .pdf, .png, etc... in url's.
I added to RouteConfig.cs new routing for controller.
routes.MapRoute(
name: "Material",
url: "Material/Download/{file}",
defaults: new { controller = "Material", action = "Download", file = UrlParameter.Optional }
);
I created a new controller "Material".
// GET: Material
[Authorize]
public ActionResult Download(string file)
{
string path = Server.MapPath(String.Format("~/App_Data/Material/{0}", file));
if(System.IO.File.Exists(path))
{
string mime = MimeMapping.GetMimeMapping(path);
return File(path, mime);
}
return HttpNotFound();
}
And also transfered material folder inside app_data.
This seems to work nicely. Only authorized users can access to material folder.

It's possible to do that, but there are a lot ways to accomplish that.
A simplified scenario could be:
Disable directory listing on IIS
Create a custom "download wrapper" controller+action for the purpose of serving of those files.
Then wherever you create Action links, generate them using a HtmlHelper which would redirect the client to the "wrapper" controllers action. You can pass the filename in a parameter.
On the "wrapper" controller you could utize the [Authorize] attribute or better yet, without using such attributes everywhere you could use FluentSecurity for handling the authorization.
After you create the "wrapper" controller your URL for getting a file could look like:
www.example.com/download/file/pdf-file.pdf
This example URL assumes controller name is 'download' and action name is 'file'.

How to ignore all characters after "controller/action" in an ASP.NET MVC route?

I would like my ASP.NET MVC4 application to only serve the base HTML markup for a specific page, and after that I'm processing everything else on client-side with knockout.js/history.js/AJAX, including the initial page load.
So when someone refers to URL http://example.com/products/list/food/fruits, the MVC router should simply ignore everything what is behind "products/list" and route the request to ProductsController and List action. Then on client-side I will handle the rest and load the requested data accordingly.
I was playing with the route definitions, I tried to completely skip the "products/list" route, I also tried to add a "products/list/*" route, but didn't have success yet.

You can use an asterisk as part of the last variable in a route. For example, when configuring your routes:
routes.MapRoute(
"ProductRoute",
"products/list/{*otherArgs}",
new { controller = "Products", action = "List" });
You can learn more in MSDN's Documentation on routing under the section "Handling a Variable Number of Segments in a URL Pattern"

You will need to create your own route.
Something like this should do the trick:
routes.MapRoute("Products", "Products/{List}",
new {controller = "Products", action = "List"}
);
Note: I´m not sure if the other parameters are required in the route.

Dynamic Routing in asp.net webforms

Can we add dynamically routes to global.asax file
Suppose if I have multiple routes for the same page for example
http://website.com/about
http://website.com/en/about
http://website.com/en/about-us
While my actual URL for the page is like http://website.com/en/about-us.
My question now is: is there a way I can dynamically define these routes in global.asax file in such a way that it reads the URL entered by users like http://website.com/about and then compares it with database table and redirects it to the correct page which is http://website.com/en/about-us?
Taking into consideration following Table Structure:
Id URL_Name URL Actual_URL Page_Handler
1 Home http://website.com/ http://website.com/ Default.aspx
2 About Us http://website.com/about http://website.com/en/about-us About.aspx
3 About Us http://website.com/about-us http://website.com/en/about-us About.aspx
4 About Us http://website.com/en/about http://website.com/en/about-us About.aspx
5 Contact http://website.com/contact http://website.com/en/contact-us Contact.aspx
6 Contact http://website.com/en/contact http://website.com/en/contact-us Contact.aspx
Right now I have to configure each route manually in the global.asax:
if(HttpContext.Current.Request.Url.ToString().ToLower().Equals("http://website.com/about")
{
HttpContext.Current.Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently";
HttpContext.Current.Response.Redirect("http://website.com/en/about-us");
}
if(HttpContext.Current.Request.Url.ToString().ToLower().Equals("http://website.com/en/about")
{
HttpContext.Current.Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently";
HttpContext.Current.Response.Redirect("http://website.com/en/about-us");
}
A pointer to a good example or a solution is highly appreciated.

I find routes in global.asax are great for static resources especially if you want a nice, sexy extensionless URLs for SEO.
For dynamic pages/URLs though, I tend to have a catch all route that handles the request if it doesn't match any static routes.
eg
// ignore
routes.Add(new System.Web.Routing.Route("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}", new System.Web.Routing.StopRoutingHandler()));
// sexy static routes
routes.MapPageRoute("some-page", "some-sexy-url", "~/some/rubbish/path/page.aspx", true);
// catch all route
routes.MapPageRoute(
"All Pages",
"{*RequestedPage}",
"~/AssemblerPage.aspx",
true,
new System.Web.Routing.RouteValueDictionary { { "RequestedPage", "home" } }
);
So, when a request comes in it checks each static route in turn and executes the specified page. If no match is found, it drops through to the catch all and then AssemblerPage.aspx handles the request. This AssemblerPage will analyse the requested URL and redirect, rewrite path or stick some controls on the page to render - basically, it can do whatever you want it to do.
In your case, I'd have the AssemblerPage check the DB and compare the requested URL with the URLs in your table. Then simply redirect or rewrite path.

Would ASP.NET Routing help you here ?
Have a look at this: - ASP.net URL rewrite based off query string ID