ASP.NET MVC model nesting routes

Question

Consider an ASP.NET MVC application with two models: let's say `Company` and `Person`. Each company has a list of persons. Each person belongs to one company only. If you set up the model and use Visual Studio to generate the controllers/views, you get the ability to edit the companies at `/Company/{id}` etc. and the ability to edit the persons at `/Person/{id}` etc. But I want it to be such that you can only add a person inside a company, i.e. you would edit the persons at `/Company/{id}/Persons/{id}`. How can I set up this sort of routing in ASP.NET MVC 5? EDIT: So I did this in my routes: ``` routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}"); routes.MapRoute( name: "CompanyPerson", url: "Company/{CompanyId}/Person/{PersonId}/{action}", defaults: new { controller = "Person", action = "Index", PersonId = UrlParameter.Optional } ); routes.MapRoute( name: "Company", url: "Company/{id}/{action}", defaults: new { controller = "Company", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional } ); ro…

Accepted Answer

Well, it doesn't work the way you're thinking. The reason is that you have two different controllers, `Company` and `Person`. You can't call both of them at the same time.

You are going to have to decide whether you want to edit a person at the `Person` controller, or edit them at the `Company` controller. Personally, I'd edit the person at the person level, but that will mean your `Person.Edit` method will have to take the `companyId` as well as the `personId`.

So you would then create a route like this:

```
routes.MapRoute(
    "CompanyPerson",                                // Route name
    "Company/{companyId}/Person/{personId}",        // URL with parameters
    new { controller = "Person", action = "Edit" }  // Parameter defaults
);
```

Then your `Person.Edit` method would look like this:

```
public ActionResult Edit(int companyId, int personId) {}
```

EDIT:

You are going to have to use constraints to do what you want.

```
routes.MapRoute(
    name: "CompanyPerson",
    url: "Company/{companyId}/Person/{personId}/{action}",
    defaults: new { controller = "Person", action = "Index", PersonId = UrlParameter.Optional },
    new {personId = @"\d+" }
);
```

However, this now means you can do `/Company/7/Person/15/Create`, and that just won't make any sense. The `personId` will simply get ignored.

As for why your Create Link isn't working, is because of the id being before the action. You'll also need another route.

```
routes.MapRoute(
    name: "CompanyPerson",
    url: "Company/{companyId}/Person/Create",
    defaults: new { controller = "Person", action = "Create" }
);
```

and this

```
@Html.ActionLink("Create", "Person", new { companyId = Model.companyId })
```

It would be a lot easier if you just stuck to the Id after the action. You also need to be careful of capitalizing variable names, as these are C# variables and are case sensitive.

ASP.NET MVC model nesting routes

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