MVC3 routes - replace id with object name

I'm looking for a fast & elegant way of converting my object IDs with descriptive names, so that my autogenerated routes look like:

/products/oak-table-25x25-3-1

instead of

/products/5bd8c59c-fc37-40c3-bf79-dd30e79b55a5

In this sample:

uid  = "5bd8c59c-fc37-40c3-bf79-dd30e79b55a5"
name = "Oak table (25x25) 3/1"

I don't even know how that feature could be named, so that I might google for it.

The problem that I see so far is the uniqueness of that "url-object-name", for example if I have two oak tables 25x35 in the db, and their names differ too little to be uniquely url-named but enough to fool the unique constraint in the db.

I'm thinking of writing that function for name-transform in SQL as an UDF, then adding a calculated field that returns it, then uniqu开发者_开发百科e-constraining that field.

Is there some more mainstream way of achieving that?

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One method is that employed by stackoverflow.com which in your case would be:

/products/5bd8c59c-fc37-40c3-bf79-dd30e79b55a5/oak-table-25x25-3-1

This ensures uniqueness, however the length of the UUID may be a deterrent. You may consider adding a sequential int or bigint identity value to the products table in addition to the uniqueidentifier field. This however would require an additional index on that column for lookup, though a similar index would be required for a Url having only a descritive string. Yet another method would be to use a hash value, seeded by date for instance, which you can compose with the descriptive name. It is simpler to rely on a sequential ID value generated by a database, but if you envision use NoSQL storage mechanisms in the future you may consider using an externally generated hash value to append.

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Identity should have 2 properties: it should be unique and unchangable. If you can guarantee, that /products/oak-table-25x25-3-1 will never change to /products/oak-table-25x25-3-1-1 (remember, user can have bookmarks, that shouldn't return 404 statuscode)- you can use name as url parameter and get record by this parameter.

If you can't guarantee uniqueness or want to select record more faster - use next:

1. /products/123/oak-table-25x25-3-1 - get record by id (123)
2. /products/123/blablabla - should redirect to first, because blabla no exists or have anoher id
3. /products/123 - should redirect to first

And try to use more short identities - remember, that at web 2.0 url is a part of UI, and UI should be friendly.

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MVC routing (actions) will handle spaces and slashes in a name. It will encode them as %20, and then decode them correctly.

Thus your URL would be /products/oak%20table%2025x25-3%2F1

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I have done something very similar in an eCommerce platform I am working on.

The idea is that the URL without the unique ID is better for SEO but we didn't want the unique ID to be the product name that can change often.

The solution was to implement .NET MVC "URL slug only" functionality. The product manager creates "slugs" for every product that are unique and are assigned to products. These link to the product but the product ID and name can be changed whenever.

This allows:

domain.com/oak-table-25x25-3-1

to point to:

/products/5bd8c59c-fc37-40c3-bf79-dd30e79b55a5

(The same functionality can be used on categories too so domain.com/tables can point to domain.com/category/5b38c79c-f837-42c3-bh79-dd405479b15b5)

I have documented how I did this at: http://makit.net/post/3380143142/dotnet-slug-only-urls