Creating dynamic MVC controllers, actions for dynamic pages

Question

Hi, I have what seems like a difficult problem to get around, but I'm sure it can be done. I have a requirement to create dynamically managed content in an MVC4 application in C #. I understand how to create my controllers and map them to views, but I can’t figure out how to do this dynamically. The following is the scenario:

The user goes to the CMS and creates a page of a virtual type in a new folder in the root of the site. This folder and page do not exist in my MVC application. The URL to access the new page will be similar to www.newfolder / newpage. I have a full page view of the page that the user selects as a view to load from a new page.

So my question is how to create an MVC controller and an action that can take the url above and provide me with the correct look and keep the dynamic structure of the url. I read a few things, but it really doesn't look like what I'm trying to do.

Any help would be great.

Greetings

Update 09/29/2015 For those who comment below, to ask how this was done at the end, the code below is for my route configuration and my dynamic controller.

Route configuration

public class RouteConfig { public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes) { routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}"); routes.MapRoute( name:"Gallery", url: System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["gallerycontroller"] + "{id}", defaults: new { controller = "Component", action = "Gallery", id = UrlParameter.Optional }); routes.MapRoute( name: "ContactForm", url: System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["contactcontroller"] + "{action}/{id}", defaults: new { controller = "ContactUs", action = "ContactForm", id = UrlParameter.Optional }); routes.MapRoute( name: "Dynamic", url: "{*page}", defaults: new { controller = "Master", action = "Load", page = UrlParameter.Optional} ); routes.MapRoute( name: "Default", url: "{controller}/{action}/{id}", defaults: new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional } ); } } 

My dynamic page controller

  public class MasterController : Controller { public ActionResult Load(string page) { if (page == null) { //load default page ContentDelivery _cd = new ContentDelivery(System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ContentDelivery"]); ContentPage _cp = _cd.GetPage(1); if (_cp != null) { string _view = "PageViews/" + _cp.PageView; return View(_view, _cp); } else { return View("PageViews/404Page"); } } else { ContentDelivery _cd = new ContentDelivery(System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ContentDelivery"]); ContentPage _cp = _cd.GetPage(page); if (_cp != null) { string _view = "PageViews/" + _cp.PageView; return View(_view, _cp); }else{ return View("PageViews/404Page"); } } } } 

Obviously, there is more code in my service layers and in my database for dynamic content, but I can share it if it helps anyone.

thanks

Answer 1

If there is only one method that is called for each dynamic page, and if your dynamic page is actually a custom view, you can use routing to achieve this. Just change your actual mapping to have something like this:

 routes.MapRoute( null, "{folder}/{page}", defaults: new { controller = "Dynamic", action = "Load", folder = "", page = "" } ); 

you will also need to add a restriction to your route, which will check if the folder and page exist in your database (I suppose you store this information in the database)

take a look at this post for custom routing: http://www.asp.net/mvc/tutorials/controllers-and-routing/creating-custom-routes-cs

also your controller method must have the folder and page parameters.