On: ASP.NET MVC Framework (Part 2): URL Routing

[mrtron]

I don't know how this compares to URL routing previously in ASP.NET, but compared to something like Django's URL dispatcher it just looks...ugly.

Django:

 urlpatterns = patterns('',
    (r'^articles/2003/$', 'news.views.special_case_2003'),
    (r'^articles/(\d{4})/$', 'news.views.year_archive'),
    (r'^articles/(\d{4})/(\d{2})/$', 'news.views.month_archive'),
    (r'^articles/(\d{4})/(\d{2})/(\d+)/$', 'news.views.article_detail'),
 )

I could see this being yet another situation where someone writes a utility to produce these URL routes for ASP.NET, and makes me wonder why they took such an approach.

[mcfly → mrtron]

Just skimming over the article, it seems to me that the framework authors are trying to do something similar to Routes in Rails or Pylons (http://routes.groovie.org/).

Actually, I find Routes' much clearer and easier to use (regular expressions and readability don't go very well together, IMO) than Django's URL-scheme. The url-generation feature of Routes comes in handy, too... don't know if Django has something equivalent. Granted, regular expressions may be more powerful, but I am willing to sacrifice some expressiveness in exchange for ease of use and improved readability. So, I can see why the framework authors ported that functionality (sort of).

[mrtron → mcfly]

You find those routes easier to read than a list of regexs?

Interesting, I assumed the django list would make sense what it was doing at a glance to anyone.

I am just picturing a list of ~25 routes, and it being impossible to get an idea of the sitemap.