ASP.NET MVC4 Custom routing - asp.net-mvc-4

Question

I want to create simple blog engine. For fancy and clean url I'd like to use routing mechanism implemented in MVC4.
I added to RouteConfig.cs this lines:
public class RouteConfig
{
public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
{
routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");
routes.MapRoute(
name: "Default",
url: "{controller}/{action}/{id}",
defaults: new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional }
);
routes.MapRoute(
name: "ArticleList",
url: "Articles/{category}/{page}",
defaults: new
{
controller = "Articles",
category = UrlParameter.Optional,
page = 1
});
}
}
And if I write in web browser url:
http://localhost:6666/Articles/SomeCategory/3
I want to move to this controller:
public class ArticlesController : ControllerBase<IHomeService>
{
public ActionResult Index(string category, int page = 0)
{
return View("~/Views/Article/Articles.cshtml");
}
}
with parameters category = "SomeCategory" and page = 1.
All I recieve is
Server Error in '/' Application.
The resource cannot be found.
What is wrong?

Answer 1

routes.MapRoute(
name: "ArticleList",
url: "{controller}/{category}/{page}",
defaults: new
{
category = UrlParameter.Optional,
page = 1,
action = "Index"
},
constraints: new
{
controller = "Articles"
}
);
routes.MapRoute(
name: "Default",
url: "{controller}/{action}/{id}",
defaults: new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional }
);
EDIT
I should have added this to the answer but I was in a hurry:
Register your custom routes first, the more custom the more priority they have.
In the example above using the constraints or hard-coding the route produces the same result. Constraints are more flexible because you can use regex to restrict the controllers/actions/parameters values that your route is for. For instance, if you add a new route that uses the /category/page pattern your can then modify the controller constraint accordingly:
constraints: new
{
controller = #"^(Articles|AnotherController)$"
}

Answer 2

The problem is, you have an optional parameter in the middle of your {controller}/{category}/{page} path. ASP.NET routing has problem with that, because if category is not provided, it has no way to detect that the category is not provided.

Answer 3

To enable attribute routing, call MapMvcAttributeRoutes during configuration. Following are the code snipped.
public class RouteConfig
{
public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
{
routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");
routes.MapMvcAttributeRoutes();
}
}
In MVC5, we can combine attribute routing with convention-based routing. Following are the code snipped.
public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
{
routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");
routes.MapMvcAttributeRoutes();
routes.MapRoute(
name: "Default",
url: "{controller}/{action}/{id}",
defaults: new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional }
);
}
It is very easy to make a URI parameter optional by adding a question mark to the route parameter. We can also specify a default value by using the form parameter=value.