How to use routing in a ASP MVC website to localize in two languages - But keeping exiting URLs

Question

We have a couple ASP MVC websites just using the standard VS templates default settings - Working as wanted. But now I want to localize these website ( They are now in Dutch and I will add the English language ) I would like to use routing and not Resource because: 1. Languages will differ in content, numbers of pages, etc. 2. The content is mostly text.

I would like the URLs to look some thing like this - www.domain.com/en/Home/Index, www.domain.nl/nl/Home/Index. But the last one should also work with - www.domain.nl/Home/Index - Witch is the exciting URLs.

I have implemented Phil Haacks areas ViewEngine from this blogpost - http://haacked.com/archive/2008/11/04/areas-in-aspnetmvc.aspx. But only putting the English website in the areas and keeping the Dutch in old structure. Witch are served as Phils default fallback. But the problem is here that I have to duplicate my controllers for both language's.

So I tried the work method described in this tread - ASP.NET MVC - Localization route. It works OK with the ?en? and /nl/ but not with the old URLs.

When using this code in the global.asax the URL without the culture isn't working.

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

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

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

        }

I properly overlooking some thing simple but I can't get this to work for me. Or are there a better way of doing this?

Mattias Jakobsson · Accepted Answer · 2010-04-13 09:26:39Z

To make the url without culture work I would probably create my own implementation of the route class. That could look something like this:

public class LocalizedRoute : Route
{
    //Constuctors

    public override RouteData GetRouteData(HttpContextBase httpContext)
    {
        var routeData = base.GetRouteData(httpContext);
        var culture = "en";
        if (httpContext.Request.Url.ToString().Contains(".nl"))
            culture = "nl";

        routeData.Values.Add("culture", culture);

        return routeData;
    }
}

Then you can use that something like this when you register your routes:

var route = new LocalizedRoute("{controller}/{action}/{id}", new MvcRouteHandler()) {
    Defaults = new RouteValueDictionary(new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = "" }),
    Constraints = new RouteValueDictionary(),
    DataTokens = new RouteValueDictionary()
};

routes.Add("DefaultWitoutCulture", route);

This code could, of course, be cleaned up a bit. But this is a basic example of how I would solve your problem.

Anders Pedersen · Accepted Answer · 2010-04-14 13:12:39Z

Thanks Mattias.

After some trial and errors I came op with this solution, that localize to English and Dutch, but also must important works with the old URLs - due to the constraint.

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

            routes.MapRoute(
                "Default",                                                              // Route name
                "{culture}/{controller}/{action}/{id}",                                 // URL with parameters
                new { culture = "nl", controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = "" },
                new { culture = @"\Aen|nl\z" }                                          // Parameter defaults
            );

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

        }

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