MVC Extensions

SEO Extensions includes several powerful

UrlHelper

extension methods that allows to easily get the target URLs for your SEO routes by way of strongly typed lambda expressions (no more action names strings). This way, you can wipe out the number of bugs related to the way you build your URLs and, at the same time, make the process of renaming and refactoring for your action methods a quick and safe task.

To retrieve the URL for a SEO route, you have just to invoke the RouteUrl extension method from the

UrlHelper

class (generally available inside MVC actions and controllers by way of the

Url

contextual property), along with a lambda expression which specifies the eventual parameter values. The

RouteUrl

is a generic method and requires you to pass the type of the controller you are interested in.

In the next block of code, for example, the

RouteUrl

method is called inside a Razor view, in order to retrieve the URL for a SEO action:

            @using Cobisi.Web.MvcExtensions

            <h1>hello, world</h1>
            
            <a href="@(
                Url.RouteUrl<MyController>(c => c.Foo(MyEnum.SecondUglyValue))
            )">Click me, please</a>
        

Of course, the previous technique can be used within your action methods too. Beside the

RouteUrl

extension method being also available within your controllers, SEO Extensions also comes with handy extensions methods for the

Controller

class itself. In fact, the

RedirectToDeclarativeRoute

method allows to easily retrieve an

ActionResult

instance which can be used to redirect to a specific declarative route, identified by a lambda expression.

In the following example, the

AddItemToCart

action method one of the previously defined controllers is updated to redirect to another action method, in the same controller. Since the

RedirectToDeclarativeRoute

also accepts a generic argument specifying the target controller class, the same technique can be applied for external controllers too.

            [Route.Action("~/cart/add")]
            public ActionResult AddItemToCart(
                [Route.Param(Constraint = @"part-\d{3}")]
                string item
            )
            {
                // TODO: Update the shopping cart as requested

                return this.RedirectToDeclarativeRoute(c => c.ShowCartSummary());
            }

            [Route.Action("~/cart/summary")]
            public ActionResult ShowCartSummary()
            {
                return Content("Thanks for your order, dude");
            }