Odd routing outcome with ASP.NET MVC 4? - asp.net-mvc-4

Question

I have the oddest routing problem that I cannot work out how to avoid. We have two areas in our application, and both of them have an Employees controller. So we have these two valid URLs:
blah.com/Employees/Employees
blah.com/Reports/Employees
The routes are registered as follows:
public override void RegisterArea(AreaRegistrationContext context)
{
context.MapRoute(
"Employees_default",
"Employees/{controller}/{action}/{id}",
new { action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional }
);
}
public override void RegisterArea(AreaRegistrationContext context)
{
context.MapRoute(
"Reports_default",
"Reports/{controller}/{action}/{id}",
new { action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional }
);
}
Now everything works as expected, but the problem crops up if someone enters and incorrect URL, like this one:
blah.com/Employees
which then generates the following error:
Multiple types were found that match the controller named 'Employees'. This can happen if the route that services this request ('{controller}/{action}/{id}') does not specify namespaces to search for a controller that matches the request. If this is the case, register this route by calling an overload of the 'MapRoute' method that takes a 'namespaces' parameter.
The request for 'Employees' has found the following matching controllers:
blah.Admin.Areas.Employees.Controllers.EmployeesController
blah.Areas.Reports.Controllers.EmployeesController
It doesn't make sense to me that it would even try to match either of those two routes when the area is missing from the route? The routes clearly include the area name in the route, and it is not optional?
I also noticed that if I have another valid controller for another route, say this one:
blah.com/Tools/ErrorLog
that if I enter blah.com/ErrorLog it actually RUNS that Tools/ErrorLog controller, but it blows up attempting to find the views. Any ideas what is up here?

Answer 1

You need to use NameSpaces in your MapRoute method.
public override void RegisterArea(AreaRegistrationContext context)
{
context.MapRoute(
"Employees_default",
"Employees/{controller}/{action}/{id}",
new { action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional },
new [] { Mysolution.Myproject.Employees }
);
}
public override void RegisterArea(AreaRegistrationContext context)
{
context.MapRoute(
"Reports_default",
"Reports/{controller}/{action}/{id}",
new { action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional },
new [] { Mysolution.Myproject.Reports }
);
}