Introducing RouteMagic

Jan 30, 2011 aspnet code aspnetmvc oss suggest edit

Over the past couple of years, I’ve written several blog posts on ASP.NET Routing where I provided various extensions to routing. Typically such blog posts included a zip download of the binaries and source code to allow readers to easily try out the code.

But that’s always been a real pain and most people don’t bother. But now, there’s a better way to share such code. Moving forward, I’ll be using NuGet packages as a means of sharing my code samples.

In the case of my routing extensions, I’ve compiled them into a solution I call RouteMagic (source is available on GitHub). This solution includes two packages, RouteMagic.Mvc (extensions specific to ASP.NET MVC Routing) and RouteMagic (more general ASP.NET Routing extensions). The RouteMagic.Mvc package depends on the RouteMagic package.

These packages are available in the NuGet feed!

After installing the RouteMagic.Mvc package, you’ll have the following features available to you.

The source code for the solution contains the following projects:

RouteMagic
RouteMagic.Mvc
RouteMagic.Demo.Web (ASP.NET MVC Web application used to demo these features)
UnitTests

This is just a pet project I put together based on various blog posts I’ve written. I’d love to see some of these ideas eventually make it into the Framework. But until then, you’ll probably see these things make it into Subtext for sure!

Found a typo or mistake in the post? suggest edit

Comments

20 responses

Nick Berardi • January 30th, 2011
Wow I really like the delegate handler and the groups.
Do you mind if I use these concepts with my Apache mod_rewrite style overlay for setting up ASP.NET routes?
github.com/.../RoutingApacheRuleSet.cs
The delegates would be a great way to allow plugin routes. And the grouping is very easy already, so it would be a natural extension.
Bats Ihor • January 30th, 2011
Another one great thing in the NuGet feed! Thank you.
haacked • January 30th, 2011
@Nick, feel free. I licensed the code under a very liberal Ms-PL license. :)
A-Dubb • January 31st, 2011
Thanks for the extensions. Will check them out. Keep up the good work MVC team.
Daniel • February 4th, 2011
Thanks for making it public :) i might try it.
Doug Clutter • May 3rd, 2011
Any reason this wouldn't work with the Azure SDK? Also tried Glimpse and it didn't work either.
Thomas Tai • August 11th, 2011
Hi Phil, thanks for the library.
However it only works on the ASP.NET Development Server. Once I deployed it to IIS7 on my production Windows Server 08 R2 box, routing function just doesn't work any more. What's going on?
I have already added the follow to my web.config but still doesn't work.
<system.webServer>
<modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" />
</system.webServer>
What • September 1st, 2011
So you remove the ability to download the source code. How can we get to the demo that you say exist? You have no example of how to execute routemagic so that we can see the trace. So, all we can do is simply download the assembly without any idea of how to use it. Most of us need to debug our routes and will not need handler and grouping which is the only example. Your site says there is an example but since only the assembly is available we dont have access to the demo. Consider making the souce available again.
haacked • September 1st, 2011
@What, the source is available. http://routemagic.codeplex.com/
Andrea • December 11th, 2011
Hello.
How can I use RouteDebugger to get infos about a 404 error page?
It looks like my routing map is not properly configured, but I can't find where is the issue.
Can Route Debugger intercept a 404 error and shows some data?
haacked • December 12th, 2011
@Andrea, yeah, RouteMagic should intercept every request, unless IIS handles it first.
Andrea • March 6th, 2012
Well, I'm still facing issues with this.
I just want to debug 404 errors, but installing this NuGet package simply doesn't do the trick.
The old RouteDebugger also doesn't work when I get a 404 error page (it does work with matching routes).
Pramod Fanda • December 11th, 2012
Hi Phil,
I am getting this error when I try to install nuget.server package in VS 2010 to create a internal hosted nuget website to host internal packages.
Could not install package 'RouteMagic 1.2'. You are trying to install this package into a project that targets '.NETFramework,Version=v3.5', but the package does not contain any assembly references or content files that are compatible with that framework. For more information, contact the package author.
Any thoughts?
haacked • December 11th, 2012
Are you using ASP.NET 4?
Umbyersw • January 7th, 2013
Hi Phil I'm trying to use this however it's not showing up for me and not sure what else to try... I'm starting a new MVC 4 project, Razor view engine, with the Internet Application template chosen. Then, adding the RouteMagic.MVC package, and running - I don't see anything extra on the page. I've tried with both .NET 4 and 4.5 and in both IIS/IIS Express. Hopefully you can spot my mistake or perhaps there is some key setting that I am missing? Thanks!
haacked • January 10th, 2013
Please log an issue against the repository https://github.com/Haacked/... and I'll try and find time to look into it. Does it work for you if you create a brand new ASP.NET MVC 3 project? It could be an incompatibility with MVC 4.
thomen • July 25th, 2013
Hi I was just wondering if you had a suggested approach for the scenario where a user can pick a subdomain name and then do some theming based on that subdomain in mvc4? would RouteMagic route based on subdomain or would it more be an issue of selecting a theme based on the user's subdomain via some kind of routing of the incoming request?

Cheers,
Tom
haacked • July 25th, 2013
The point of routing is to _route_ the request to a controller action. My guess is that you don't have different controllers and actions for the theme. So for the most part, routing is not really involved.

In theory, you could have a custom route that always returns null (indicating it did not match the request) that you make sure is 1st in the route collection. It could look at the subdomain, lookup the theme, and then add the theme value to the route data so it could be passed in as a parameter to any action. But that's not the only way to handle it.
thomen • July 25th, 2013
Hi Phil,

Thanks so much for the reply. I was looking at emulating the scenario similar to oztix where you have a theme that is applied to a section of the site (in their case a purchase workflow) based on the subdomain and the products list is generated based on that.. I'm assuming the subdomain is some kind of username parameter passed in through the routing and verified and then used to form the basis of a skin. i.e. <user>.domain.com like they do for karnivool.oztix.com.au where they have a themed user page and workflow on the subdomain vs their oztix.com would it be some kind of subdomain routing where the username is passed in as a route argument? I guess then that lends the questions how would you setup username.domain.com on the fly as well like lots of ruby apps do i.e. shopify? some kind of db table of users which you validate against for routing?

I've found this blog post here http://lukesampson.com/post... and similar here http://blog.tonywilliams.me...

but wondering if you had a suggested approach mvc4 wise?
Thomas Hansen • October 20th, 2019
Funny, I never realised you had this component before I started publishing my own NuGet packages for Magic - It’s kind of annoying, because anything I look for in the NuGet repository of my own packages, yours always tends to end up at the tops the “top search result” - Unless I type its exact ID … :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FATOBQm8II0