ASP.NET MVC routing URLs starting with numbers

Question

Obviously in C# classes are not allowed to start with a number so how do I create controllers for URLs that start with a number in ASP.NET 4.6?

Example URL:

www.domain.com/40apples/

---

EDIT: Routing each URL individually will quickly become a pain to manage. Ideally, I'm looking for a solution that handles all number URLs. So that the above URL example routes to _40apples controller, 300cherries to _300cherries and 1orange to _1orange

Answer 1

You will have to use custom routing, in your RegisterRoutes method you could add another route that looks something like this:

public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
    {
        routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");

        routes.MapRoute(
            "ApplesRoute",                                           // Route name
            "40apples/{action}",                            // URL with parameters
            new { controller = "Apples", action = "Index" }  // Parameter defaults
        );

        routes.MapRoute(
            "Default",                                              // Route name
            "{controller}/{action}/{id}",                           // URL with parameters
            new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = "" }  // Parameter defaults
        );
    }

If you would want your route to catch anything starting with a number + apples you could use a regex-constraint. Something like this:

routes.MapRoute(
        "ApplesRoute",                                           // Route name
        "{number}apples/{action}",                            // URL with parameters
        new { controller = "Apples", action = "Index" }  // Parameter defaults
       ,new {number = @"\d+" } //constraint
    );

An even more generic approach would be to catch all routes that starts with a number + a word. Then you could build your route and constraints something like this:

routes.MapRoute(
        "NumbersRoute",                                           // Route name
        "{numberfruit}/{action}",                            // URL with parameters
        new { controller = "Numbers", action = "Index" }  // Parameter defaults
       ,new { numberfruit = @"\d+[A-Za-z]" } //constraint
    );

EDIT after discussion with Organic:

The approach that solved the problem in this case was using attribute routing. Which works well if you're using mvc 5 or greater.

Then you would add an attribute route similar to this to your controller:

[RoutePrefix("40apples")]

And then another route to every specific action:

[Route("{Buy}")]

Do not forget to add routes.MapMvcAttributeRoutes(); to your route config.