MVC - changing part of URL in a link

I have a site that supports localization. I would like to be able to switch between English and French.

Let say the user is currently at URL: http://www.example.com/**en**/Home

I would like to redirect to: http://www.example.com/**fr**/Home

If the user click on a "French" link how to change the URL part to "fr" yet not change the "Home" part of the URL (basically I want preserve the current location of the user)

Hope my question makes sense! I'm probably missing something very basic?

EDIT: Kind of found a solution.

<%= Html.ActionLink("Français", ViewContext.RouteData.Values["action"].ToString(), ViewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"].ToString(), new { culture = "fr" }, null)%>
<%= Html.ActionLink("English", ViewContext.RouteData.Values["action"].ToString(), ViewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"].ToString(), new { culture = "en" }, null)%>

This maintains 开发者_如何学Pythonthe action/controller of the current URL. Maybe there's a cleaner solution?

In your Global.asax

 routes.MapRoute(
   name: "LocalizedRoute",
   url: "{language}/{controller}/{action}/{id}",
   defaults:
     new
     {
       language= "fr",
       controller = "Home",
       action = "Index",
       id = UrlParameter.Optional 
     },
   constraints: new { language= @"[a-z]{2}" });

And you can have access to the language with the variable language in your controller

To generate a link:

<%= Html.ActionLink("French", ViewContext.RouteData.Values["action"], new { language = "fr" }) %>

And you can make a base class controller with this property:

public string Language { get { return this.Routedata["language"]; } }

I made a extension for RouteValueDictionary to solve this problem:

public static RouteValueDictionary SetValue(this RouteValueDictionary dictionary, string key, object value)
{
    RouteValueDictionary rvd = new RouteValueDictionary(dictionary);
    rvd[key] = value;
    return rvd;
}

Now you can use this as follow in the html template:

<div id="head">
    @Html.RouteLink("DE", ViewContext.RouteData.Values.SetValue("language", "de")) |
    @Html.RouteLink("FR", ViewContext.RouteData.Values.SetValue("language", "fr")) |
    @Html.RouteLink("IT", ViewContext.RouteData.Values.SetValue("language", "it")) |
    @Html.RouteLink("EN", ViewContext.RouteData.Values.SetValue("language", "en"))
</div>

The extension don't modifiy the RoutData.Values collection, it makes a copy and you can override the desired value.

I would suggest making the urls in this format:

http://www.mysite.com/Home/en

Then you can make actions as simple as this:

<%= Html.ActionLink("Francais", "Home", "MyController", new { id = "fr" }), null %>
<%= Html.ActionLink("English", "Home", "MyController", new { id = "en" }), null %>

Then in your controller have an action:

public ActionResult Home(string id)
{
    if(id == "en"){ // do something } 
    else if(id == "fr") { // do something else }
    return View();
}

Global.asax Route

routes.MapRoute(
   "HomeLanguageRoute", // Route name
   "MyController/Home/{id}", // URL with parameters
   new { controller = "MyController", action = "Home", id = "" }    // Parameter defaults
);