README.markdown

Overview

A very simple plugin to generate routes dynamically for client side script (javascript) calls in ASP.NET MVC.

It scans all existing controllers in the executing assembly looking for actions that match the specified sufix and generates a javascript file to be included by calling client script.

To get started

Step 1. Nuget - Add Controller

PM> Install-Package JSRouteController

Step 1. Add controller manually

Simply drop the JSRouteController.cs into you Controllers folder in your ASP.NET MVC project.

Step 2. Global.asax

public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
{	
	routes.MapRoute(
		"JavascriptRoutes", //Route name
		"Scripts/Routes.js", //The desired URL to access the generated routes
		new { 
			controller = "JSRoute", 
			action = "GetAll", 
			@namespace = "MyAppRoutes", //Desired namespace to hold the routes
			sufix = "JSON"  //Sufix used to identify actions that should be included in the output script
		}
	);
	
	/* Other mapped routes */
}

Step 3. Script Tag

Now you can include it in your view as you would with any other javascript library

<script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/Routes.js")" type="text/javascript"></script>

Step 4. Javascript code

From the client side script, just use javascript variable that holds the route address

MyAppRoutes.SomeController.SomeAction() //returns /SomeController/SomeAction

If the action responds to a GET verb and has parameters you can also pass them when using the route

MyAppRoutes.SomeController.ActionWithParameter(pmt1value, pmt2value) //returns /SomeController/ActionWithParameter?pmt1=pmt1value&pmt2value

All other actions with parameters, but without the HttpGet attribute have the parameters ommited in the resulting javascript

How it works

Conventions

From this on all actions ending with "JSON" will be parsed and added to the output javascript

public ActionResult MyActionJSON() { /* some code */ } 

The generated Javascript file will look like the following sample :

MyAppRoutes = {
				Controller1: {
					Action1: function() { return '/Controller1/Action1'; }
				},
				Controller2: {
					Action1: function() { return '/Controller2/Action1'; },
					Action2WithPmts: function(pmt1) { return '/Controller2/Action2WithPmts' + '?pmt1=' + pmt1; }
				}
			}

Disclaimer

• Tested with ASP.NET MVC 3 only
• Currently it does not add any kind of caching (which is a smart thing to do) besides the one IIS already uses with JS files (which is client side using expiration headers)