RezRouting.Net

RezRouting configures routes for ASP.Net MVC web applications using clean [resource-oriented](wiki/01. Background - Thinking-Resourcefully.md) URLs.

"Resourceful" URLs identify a web application's resources using a simple path structure, for example:

/products - get a list of products (a collection resource)
/products/1234 - get an individual product (an item resource)
/products/1234/reviews - get the reviews belonging to a product resource (a nested collection resource)
/profile/sessions - get a history of the currently signed-in user's recent sessions

This type of URL structure fits a wide range of scenarios and is in use on many sites today.

Why?

ASP.Net web application frameworks like ASP.Net MVC and ASP.Net Web API have a very simple "flat" route structure by default. This doesn't support a hierarchy of resources or scale easily to more complex applications. It also encourages developers to add lots of unrelated operations to a single controller class. There's also a good chance that the URLs generated from these routes will include capital letters, which look horrible.

RezRouting's route configuration API makes it easy to define a hierarchy of resources within your application and the routes that apply to them.

Features include:

Routing conventions automatically map routes based on actions supported by each resource's controllers
Use CRUD route conventions for simpler applications - similar to Ruby on Rails' Resource Routing
Use task-centric route conventions ( /orders/000366/cancel, /orders/000366/approve ) - a flexible scheme for more complex user-facing web applications (because you never really just "edit" stuff...)
Partition actions for a resource into separate controllers - goodbye bloated controllers!
Numerous options for URL formatting (lowercase, hyphenated etc)

Example

RezRouting configuration involves defining the structure of your application's resources, the routes that each resource supports and the controllers that handle the routes.

In this example (from the ASP.Net MVC CRUD demo), we're using a convention that looks for CRUD-focussed controller actions to support the management of a collection of products and reviews:

var root = RootResourceBuilder.Create();
root.Singular("Session", session => session.HandledBy<SessionController>());
root.Collection("Products", products =>
{
    products.HandledBy<ProductsController>();
    products.Items(product =>
    {
        product.HandledBy<ProductController>();
        product.Collection("Reviews", reviews =>
        {
            reviews.HandledBy<ReviewsController>();
            reviews.Items(review => review.HandledBy<ReviewController>());
        });
    });
});
root.ApplyRouteConventions(new CrudRouteConventions());
root.MapMvcRoutes(routes);

The CRUD route conventions map HTTP methods to CRUD operations. The following routes apply to session management:

|Route |HTTP Method & URL / Description | |--------------------------------|--------------------------------------|--------------------------| |Session.Show |GET /session
Displays authentication status and sign in form if user not already logged in (SessionController.Index) | |Session.Create |POST /session
Authenticates user (the sign in form posts to this action) (SessionController.Create) | |Session.Delete |DELETE /session
Signs out the user (SessionController.Delete) |

Here are a few examples of the routes set up to view and manage products and the reviews belonging to individual products:

|Route |HTTP Method & URL / Description | |--------------------------------|--------------------------------------|--------------------------| |Products.Index |GET /products
Display a list of products (ProductsController.Index) | |Products.Product.Show |GET /products/{id}
Displays an individual product (ProductController.Show) | |Products.Product.Edit |GET /products/{id}/edit
Displays form to edit a product (ProductController.Edit) | |Products.Product.Update |PUT /products/{id}
Saves changes to product (ProductController.Update) | |Products.Product.Delete |DELETE /products/{id}
Deletes a product (ProductController.Delete) | |Products.Product.Reviews.Index |GET /products/{productId}/reviews
Displays all reviews for a given product (ReviewsController.Index) | |Products.Product.Reviews.New |GET /products/{productId}/reviews/new
Displays form for adding a review to a product (ReviewsController.New) |

Getting Started

The WIKI includes full background and documentation. Clone / fork the project to view end-to-end working demos.

Contributions and Feedback

Request a feature or report a bug via GitHub issues.

Thanks

RezRouting was inspired by Ruby on Rails Resource Routing and its ASP.Net MVC port Restful Routing.

Author

Dan Malcolm @lakescoder - blog

##License

RezRouting.Net is released under the MIT License. See the bundled LICENSE file for details.