ASP.NET MVC 3 areas and DDD aggregate roots

Question

I'm building a site and am considering using areas to cover a similar scenario to the one I'm about to describe.

I currently have a site with 4 sections, lets call these Create, Manage, Section 3 and Section 4

Create and Manage are actions on the domain object that I'm working with. The domain object has a number of collections of sub objects that relate to it. These need to be created and managed as well.

I am using Products as an example so as not to give anything away but it doesn't quite fit the same domain - so please don't say "Why don't you have a Products section"

My current implementation has a ManageController which has Actions like Categories, Category, ProductsForCategory

I'm thinking I need areas, however, some URLs will need to be scoped so I want

• /Manage/Category/8/Products
• /Manage/Category/8/Product/1

Is this possible using Areas? Do I need to set up new routing rules?

Would my CategoryController have 2 parameters on the action e.g.

public ActionResult Product(int categoryId, int productId)
{
    //get category
    var cat = GetCategory(categoryId);

    //get product
    var product = cat.Products.SingleOrDefault(x=>x.Id == productId);

    if(product == null) 
       return RedirectToAction("Index","Manage");

    return View(product);
}

Then I would have a routing rule that passed in the category id?

Is my thinking on this correct?

Answer 1

This is possible with Areas.. although it's my understanding that areas are mainly recommended for structuring your code into a meaningful folder structure to deal with large-ish MVC apps, whereas it looks like you want to use it for achieving nested routes?

To map your nested route to /Manage/Category/8/Product/1 you could create your "Manage" area, and then add a route like so:

  context.MapRoute(null,
      "Manage/{controller}/{categoryId}/{action}/{id}",  
      new
      {
          action = "Product",
          id = "1",
          categoryId = "2"
      });

You then create an action method to accept those params:

  public ActionResult Product(string categoryId, string id)

However, your question talks about aggregate DDD roots, so I suspect I've only answered part of the question?