ASP.Net Routing in asp.net web-forms

Question

I am using ASP.Net web form Routing for my website but i want to make it more structure & hide all the Querystring ID's with proper Structure like Language/Category/PageName-Title example: www.abc.com/en/sports/cricket-world-cup

but with my current routing technique i am able to make it work as

www.abc.com/en/1/13/cricket-world-cup

domain/english-folder/language-id/page-id/page-title

How can i make it more structured as `www.abc.com/en/sports/cricket-world-cup

Since i have few Query-string i designed it this way

    //For Page.aspx
    routes.MapPageRoute("Page_Route", "en/page/{LID}/{PID}/{PageName}", "~/en/Page.aspx", false,
                new RouteValueDictionary {
                    { "LID", "0"},
                    { "PID", "0" },
                    { "PageName", "Page-not-found" }},
                new RouteValueDictionary {   
                    { "LID", "[0-9]{1,8}" },
                    { "PID", "[0-9]{1,8}" },
                });

Result of above Routing get me Friendly URL like this
www.abc.com/en/1/13/cricket-world-cup

But i want to further structure the URL like the one in example.

www.abc.com/en/sports/cricket-world-cup

Example: This url i found is more structure/ http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/europe/turkey-providing-jobs-a-future-for-more-greeks

How can i implement the same structure are they passing querystrings as hiddenfields. Please suggest best approach for such url.

another example is http://mashreqbank.com/uae/en/corporate/lending/trade-finance.aspx

they are using asp.net but i am not sure if it is ASP.Net MVC or ASP.Net webform.

I have been struggling with this kind of routing for quite long and even i cant find a complete example which can take into consideration more than one query-string as most of the example are based on one query-string.

Any help from coding gurus with example would be highly appreciated.

UPDATE: Let us take this Table into consideration which i use to store page name, title, handler, language regions etc.. This is just a demo table & doesnt resemble the actual website which i am refering to for sample structured url. I am not even sure if they are going it using URL routing or these are actual physical folder & files like old style website where you create actual folder and place files in their etc..

Page_ID     Page_Name               Page_Title              Page_Handler        Parent_Page_ID  Language_ID     Region_ID
1           Home                    Home                    index.aspx              0               1               uae
2           Personal                Personal                index.aspx              0               1               uae
3           Accounts & Deposits     Accounts & Deposits     index.aspx              2               1               uae
4           Current Account         Current Account         current-account.aspx    3               1               uae
5           Current Gold Accounts   gold Account            gold-account.aspx       3               1               uae
6           Easy Saver              Easy Saver Account      saver-account.aspx      3               1               uae
7           Fixed Deposits          Fixed Account           fixed-account.aspx      3               1               uae
8           Loans                   Loans                   index.aspx              2               1               uae
9           Personal Loans          Personal Loans          index.aspx              8               1               uae
10          car Loans               car Loans               car-loan.aspx           8               1               uae

website example for above structure http://mashreqbank.com/

We can use a common page handler if the page design is same this is what i am assuming let us say page.aspx ,

Pleae feel to make changes to structure and data inorder to achieve the desired result.

Answer 1

You could simply have something like:

routes.MapPageRoute(
    "article-route",
    "en/{category}/{pageName}",
    "~/en/page.aspx");

And then on en/page.aspx you can access the category and pageName, assuming you have a query to find the correct article based on those two variables:

string category = Page.RouteData.Values["category"] as string;
string pageName = Page.RouteData.Values["pageName"] as string;

Though, if you can't identify a page simply by category and pageName (which seems true per your updated question), you may need the id in the route. In this case, you can ignore the category and pageName route values as they are only there for a nice-looking URL. The only parameter we care about is the id since that is how you identify an article. For example, here are three examples of various routes

routes.MapPageRoute(
    "uae-route",
    "uae/en/{category}/{id}/{pageName}",
    "~/en/index.aspx");

routes.MapPageRoute(
    "gbr-route",
    "gbr/en/{category}/{id}/{pageName}",
    "~/en/index.aspx");

routes.MapPageRoute(
    "account-route",
    "en/{id}/{pageName}",
    "~/en/current-account.aspx");

//then on en/index.aspx and current-account.aspx
int pageId= 0;
if (Int32.TryParse(Page.RouteData.Values["id"] as string, out pageId)) {
    // get the page details (including parent page id and language id if needed)
    // where Page_ID=pageId. 
}

From the sounds of it though, you want to do the first example above, meaning you'll need a way to pull articles by simply category and pageName and not any type of id .

UPDATE: You don't need to create a route for each path... that's the whole point of routing. If you have multiple handlers, then you'll at least need a path for each handler ( .aspx page).

It'd be easiest to use an id in the URL, because according to your data structure, that is the only way to identify the page you want to pull. So let's use your example, using these routes:

www.abc.com/en/personal

www.abc.com/en/personal/acounts-deposits/

www.abc.com/en/personal/acounts-deposits/current-account

www.abc.com/en/personal/acounts-deposits/current-gold-account

www.abc.com/en/personal/acounts-deposits/easy-saver

You have one route:

routes.MapPageRoute(
    "personal_route",
    "en/personal/{category}/{pageName}",
    "~/personal.aspx",
    false,
    new RouteValueDictionary { { "category", string.Empty }, {"pageName", string.Empty}}); //allow for no values

And the personal.aspx has the following code:

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    string category = Page.RouteData.Values["category"] as string;
    string pageName = Page.RouteData.Values["pageName"] as string;
    if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(category)) {
        //no category... must be the /personal route. handle that    
    }
    else if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(pageName))  {
        //no page name, just load the category page content
        //Psuedo query against your non-existant data schema
        //SELECT * FROM SiteContent WHERE Page_Handler='Personal' AND Page_Category=category && Page_URL=""
    }
    else {
        //SELECT * FROM SiteContent WHERE Page_Handler='Personal' AND Page_Category=category && Page_URL=pageName
    }
}

As you can see, your problem is you have no way to identify pages without the IDs. You'd need to replace all those IDs in your table with unique URLs. It's doable.