C# 4 and .NET 4

1266 ❘ ChaPTer 42 Asp.net dynAmic dAtA And mvc
Our list view is now implemented, with a minimum of effort.
Note that none of the links provided are yet active. If you try to click on the first Details link, for example,
the page will navigate to http://localhost:59360/Products/Details/1 and receive the following
error message:
The view 'Details' or its master was not found. The following locations were searched:
~/Views/Products/Details.aspx
~/Views/Products/Details.ascx
~/Views/Shared/Details.aspx
~/Views/Shared/Details.ascx
What is happening here is that the view exposes a URL that maps to the Details() method in
ProductsController, which you haven’t yet configured. You can put a breakpoint in this method and
refresh the page to confirm this if you like. This method currently returns an ActionResult using a call to
View() with no parameters, which has no associated view defined, hence the error.
Customizing asP.neT mVC applications
You now have a functioning ASP.NET MVC application, although you certainly wouldn’t call it “fully”
functioning. At the moment, you have created a simple list view for products, but as you saw at the end of
the previous section, there are other views required in order to make things work properly. Also, navigating
to a list of products by manually entering a URL is hardly a good way to navigate through a web site, so
that needs fixing, too.
In this section, you will look in a little more detail at how URLs are mapped to controller operations, and
then modify the PCSMVCMagicShop web application to add additional functionality for the Products page.
Url operation routing
Earlier, it was noted that the Global.asax file in your application configures routing. The contents of the
code-behind for this file are as follows:
public class MvcApplication : System.Web.HttpApplication
{
public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
{
routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");
}
routes.MapRoute(
"Default",
// Route name
"{controller}/{action}/{id}",
// URL with parameters
new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = "" } // Parameter defaults
);
}
protected void Application_Start()
{
RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);
}
code snippet PCSMVCMagicShop/Global.asax.cs
Much of this should look familiar from the “Routing” section at the start of this chapter. The
IgnoreRoute() and MapRoute() methods are extension methods that ASP.NET MVC defines for you to
make it easier to customize routes.
You can see a single default route defined that takes the form {controller}/{action}/{id}. There are
also default values provided for the three route parameters controller, action, and id of Home, Index, as
well as an empty string. For the /Products route you entered to get to the products list, these parameters
were set to Products, Index, and an empty string.
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