How to prevent Url.RouteUrl(…) from inheriting route values from the current request

Question

Lets say you have an action method to display products in a shopping cart

 // ProductsController.cs
 public ActionMethod Index(string gender) {

      // get         


        

Answer 1

My solution was this :

An HtmlExtension helper method :

    public static string RouteUrl(this UrlHelper urlHelper, string routeName, object routeValues, bool inheritRouteParams)
    {
        if (inheritRouteParams)
        {
            // call standard method
            return urlHelper.RouteUrl(routeName, routeValues);
        }
        else
        {
            // replace urlhelper with a new one that has no inherited route data
            urlHelper = new UrlHelper(new RequestContext(urlHelper.RequestContext.HttpContext, new RouteData()));
            return urlHelper.RouteUrl(routeName, routeValues);
        }
    }

I can now do :

Url.RouteUrl('testimonials-route', new { }, false)

and know for sure it will always behave the same way no matter what the context.

The way it works is to take the existing UrlHelper and create a new one with blank 'RouteData'. This means there is nothing to inherit from (even a null value).

Answer 2

Maybe I'm missing something here, but why not set it up like this:

In your global asax, create two routes:

routes.MapRoute(
    "testimonial-mf",
    "Testimonials/{gender}",
    new { controller = "Testimonials", action = "Index" }
);

routes.MapRoute(
    "testimonial-neutral",
    "Testimonials/Neutral",
    new { controller = "Testimonials", action = "Index", gender="Neutral" }
);

Then, use Url.Action instead of Url.RouteUrl:

<%= Url.Action("Testimonials", "Index") %>
<%= Url.Action("Testimonials", "Index", new { gender = "Male" }) %>
<%= Url.Action("Testimonials", "Index", new { gender = "Female" }) %>

Which, on my machine resolves to the following urls:

/Testimonials/Neutral 
/Testimonials/Male 
/Testimonials/Female

I'm not sure if this is an acceptable solution, but it's an alternative, no?