What's wrong with these asp.net mvc routing rules? - asp.net

Question

I have defined a series of Routes in Global.asax.cs:
public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
{
routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");
routes.MapRoute(null, "", // Only matches the empty URL (i.e. ~/)
new
{
controller = "Stream",
action = "Entry",
streamUrl = "Pages",
entryUrl = "HomePage"
}
);
routes.MapRoute(null, "{streamUrl}", // matches ~/Pages
new { controller = "Stream", action = "List" }
);
routes.MapRoute(null, "{streamUrl}/{entryUrl}", // matches ~/Pages/HomePage
new { controller = "Stream", action = "Entry" }
);
routes.MapRoute(
"Default", // Route name
"{controller}/{action}/{id}", // URL with parameters
new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults
);
When I put in mydomain.com/ or mydomain.com/Pages/HomePage the route works exactly as I expect. So now I'm writing a partial view to generate a list of links. as a test I put this code in the partial view:
<ul>
<% foreach (var item in Model) { %>
<li id="<%:item.Text.Replace( " ", "-") %>">
//This works - link shows up in browser as mydomain.com/
<%: Html.RouteLink(item.Text, new{ streamUrl = "Pages", entryUrl = "HomePage" }) %>
//This does not work - link shows up as mydomain.com/Blog?entryUrl=BlogEntryOne
//instead of mydomain.com/Blog/BlogEntryOne
<%: Html.RouteLink(item.Text, new{ streamUrl = "Blog", entryUrl = "BlogEntryOne" }) %>
</li>
<% } %>
</ul>
I'm not sure why the entryUrl route value isn't being registered correctly. What am I missing?

Answer 1

I'm not terribly accustomed with MVC, but I think you should put your more specific route first, as in:
routes.MapRoute(null, "{streamUrl}/{entryUrl}", // matches ~/Pages/HomePage
new { controller = "Stream", action = "Entry" }
);
routes.MapRoute(null, "{streamUrl}", // matches ~/Pages
new { controller = "Stream", action = "List" }
);