ASP.NET Avoid hard coding paths.

Question

I am looking for a best practice solution whose goal is to reduce the number of URLs hardcoded in an ASP.NET application.

For example, when viewing a product details screen, editing that information, and then submitting the changes, the user is redirected back to the product list screen. Instead of coding:

Response.Redirect("~/products/list.aspx?category=books");

I would like to have a solution allowing me to do something like this:

Pages.GotoProductList("books");

where Pagesis a member of a common base class.

I just stumbled here and would like to hear any other way that someone controlled the redirection of their applications.

EDIT

In the end, I created the following solution: I already had a common base class to which I added the Pages enumeration (thanks to Mark), and each element has an attribute System.ComponentModel.DescriptionAttributecontaining the page URL:

public enum Pages
{
    [Description("~/secure/default.aspx")]
    Landing,
    [Description("~/secure/modelling/default.aspx")]
    ModellingHome,
    [Description("~/secure/reports/default.aspx")]
    ReportsHome,
    [Description("~/error.aspx")]
    Error
}

Then I created several overloaded methods to handle various scripts. I used reflection to get the page URL through the attribute Description, and I pass the query string parameters as an anonymous type (also using reflection to add each property as a query string parameter):

private string GetEnumDescription(Enum value)
{
    Type type = value.GetType();
    string name = Enum.GetName(type, value);

    if (name != null)
    {
        FieldInfo field = type.GetField(name);
        if (field != null)
        {
            DescriptionAttribute attr = Attribute.GetCustomAttribute(field, typeof(DescriptionAttribute)) as DescriptionAttribute;

            if (attr != null)
                return attr.Description;
        }
    }

    return null;
}

protected string GetPageUrl(Enums.Pages target, object variables)
{
    var sb = new StringBuilder();
    sb.Append(UrlHelper.ResolveUrl(Helper.GetEnumDescription(target)));

    if (variables != null)
    {
        sb.Append("?");
        var properties = (variables.GetType()).GetProperties();

        foreach (var property in properties)
            sb.Append(string.Format("{0}={1}&", property.Name, property.GetValue(variables, null)));
    }

    return sb.ToString();
}

protected void GotoPage(Enums.Pages target, object variables, bool useTransfer)
{
    if(useTransfer)
        HttpContext.Current.Server.Transfer(GetPageUrl(target, variables));
    else
        HttpContext.Current.Response.Redirect(GetPageUrl(target, variables));
}

A typical call would look like this:

GotoPage(Enums.Pages.Landing, new {id = 12, category = "books"});

Comments?

Answer 1

, ( "MyPageClass" ) "" :

public class MyPageClass : Page
{
    private const string productListPagePath = "~/products/list.aspx?category=";
    protected void GotoProductList(string category)
    {
         Response.Redirect(productListPagePath + category);
    }
}

, , , :

 public partial class Default : MyPageClass
 {
      ...
 }

, :

 GotoProductList("Books");

, , , , ProductList. , grody .

, db / ( , HTML , ASPX, , , ). , , , :

 protected void GoToPage(PageTypeEnum pgType, string category)
 {
      //Get the enum-to-page mapping from a table or a dictionary object stored in the Application space on startup
      Response.Redirect(GetPageString(pgType) + category);  // *something* like this
 }

: GoToPage (enumProductList, "" );

, - , ( ), (intellisense , ).

!

Answer 2

, , URL. , .

Answer 3

. XML , , .

// Please note i have not included any error handling code.
public class RoutingHelper
{
    private NameValueCollecton routes;

    private void LoadRoutes()
    {
        //Get your routes from db or config file 
        routes = /* what ever your source is*/
    }

    public void RedirectToSection(string section)
    {
        if(routes == null) LoadRoutes();

        Response.Redirect(routes[section]);
    }
}

This is just a sample code, and it can be implemented in any way. The main question you need to think about is where you want to keep the mappings. A simple xml file could do this:

`<mappings>
    <map name="Books" value="/products.aspx/section=books"/>
    ...
</mappings>`

and then just upload it to the route collection.