How can I achieve clean URL routing with custom user ID?

My ASP.NET MVC site allows users to register and give themselves user names, which will be unique and allow others to browse their pages with a clean URL that includes their name, like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. do.

For example:

• mysite.com/michael.guthrie
• mysite.com/john
• mysite.com/john/images
• mysite.com/john/blog

etc.

The problem is that the first URL segment might be used for other "regular" controllers/actions, like:

• mysite.com/about
• mysite.com/register

So basically I seek for a routing scheme that says something like: If the first URL segment is a known controller, treat it as a controller (and parse the relevant action and parameters as usual), but if not - treat it as a user name, and pass it to a dedicated controller+action which will parse it and continue accordingly.

I don't want a solution that will enforce me to add routes for every specific controller that I have, such that after the routing module will go over all of them and won't find a match, it will get to the last one which defines a r开发者_如何学编程oute for this special user name segment. The reason is primarily maintenance (I must remember to add a route every time I code a new controller, for example.)

I assume I can implement my own MvcRouteHandler / IRouteHandler but I feel there must be simpler solution that won't have me tweak MVC's out-of-the-box routing mechanism.

Note: I've read How to achieve nice litle USER page url like facebook or twitter? and it doesn't answer my question, it's just says that there is a URL rewriting module.

Do you know any good, elegant, clean way to achieve that?

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You should have your first route be your Usesr route, with a route constraint along the lines of what I described in this answer: MVC routing question.

If your route is in the form {username}/{controller}/{id}, this route should cover all contingencies.

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in the global.asax file you can map your routes in the registerRoutes() method you can do something like this:

routes.MapRoute(
                "ToonStudenten", // Route name
                "{controller}/{action}/{userID}, // URL with parameters
                new { controller = "Docent", action = "ToonStudenten", userID = UrlParameter.Optional} // Parameter defaults
            );

I believe you can change the way your views look with this mapRouting, not entirely sure how though.. will try and search it up

You may want to take a look at this post: MVC 3 keeping short url

You don't need to set a route for each URL. With a little help from route constraints you can do something like this:

routes.MapRoute(
    "Home", // Route name
    "{action}", // URL with parameters
    new { controller = "Home", action = "Index" }, // Parameter defaults
    new { action = "TaskA|TaskB|TaskC|etc" } //Route constraints
);

routes.MapRoute(
    "Account", // Route name
    "{action}", // URL with parameters
    new { controller = "Account", action = "Logon" }, // Parameter defaults
    new { action = "Logon|Logoff|Profile|FAQs|etc" } //Route constraints
);