ASP.NET MVC Route definition DSL

Just had an interesting idea… wouldn’t it be cool to be able to define ASP.NET routes via DSL (Ayende got me hooked up on the idea).

As Ayende mentions, making the idea work is quite simple, check out his blog posts about it:

http://www.ayende.com/Blog/category/547.aspx

But doing something serious with it takes a little bit more work:

http://www.ayende.com/Blog/archive/2007/12/13/Requirements-of-a-DSL-engine.aspx

But before I complicate myself out of doing this, consider this idea. Instead of these route definitions (pictures from ScottGu’s blog):

Think if you could define them in Routes.boo with something like:

Route “[controller]/[action]/[id]“:
    Defaults:
        action “Index”, id null

Route “Default.aspx”:
    Defaults:
        controller “Home”, action “index”, id null

Route “Search”
    Defaults:
        controller “Search”, action “index”

Route “Search/[query]“
    Defaults:
        controller “Search”, action “results”

Route “Products/Detail/[id]“
    Defaults:
        controller “Products”, action “Detail”
    Validation:
        id “\d{1,8}”

What do you think?

Ill try Ayende’s Rhino.DSL one of these days and take a crack at it… maybe something useful will come of it (or at least some new knowledge :))

Cheers!