LUKE PUPLETT

Hi Phil

Congratulations on MVC, I can say that it's the first major MS framework I've enjoyed in a while, due to its simplicity.

Can I suggest a non-matching style routing system for MVC 4?

The route-matching logic is prone to problems, see link, and although there may be an answer, I don't care; as a 'user' of your technology, I want to go home happy and make progress on my project. I just want it to work.

My idea is to have an attribute on each and every action method that sets the route, optional default values for the params and IsDefaultAction for the controller.

A full list of all controllers and routes can then be made and the need to 'match' is eliminated.

The only problem might be that attributes are fussy about using constants, so maybe this would suffice if the attrib won't take an anonymous type:

[Route(Format = "{controller}/{id}/{action}")]
[DefaultAction]
[DefaultParamValue(Param = "id", Value = "")]
public ActionResult ... (string id) { ... }

And for, controller-less and action-less URLs:

[Route(Format = "{year}/{month}/{day}")]
public ActionResult ... (int year, int month) { ... }

Which would throw because the day parameter is missing, making route misconfiguration easier to discover. The Controller and Action method to call is inferred from what the attribute decorates. If you wanted to allow it, the controller no longer needs to be named XyzController.

Furthermore, if someone defines two controller-less and action-less routes, both with 3 params, then this can be caught and thrown when the route table is built instead of only being discoverable when a request comes in.

For example, if I also add to a different method:

[Route(Format = "{country}/{case}/{agent}")]

Then it should detect that this conflicts with the one above. There's no controller name or action name in the URL to assist routing and both take 3 params.

I'm sure I've missed out some key things that the current system permits, but as I said, I don't want it to be smart and enigmatic. I want it to work, or clearly direct me to the problem when I mess up.

Thanks for listening.

Luke