MVC3 routes - how to separate after the last dash in url? - asp.net-mvc-3

Question

Given the following routes:
routes.MapRoute(name: "CityHomePage1", url: "{city}-{state}", defaults: new { controller = "Home", action = "GeoHomePage" });
routes.MapRoute(name: "CityHomePage2", url: "{city}-{state}/", defaults: new { controller = "Home", action = "GeoHomePage" });
routes.MapRoute(name: "CityStateResults", url: "{city}-{state}/{searchTerm}", defaults: new { controller = "Results", action = "SearchCityState" });
routes.MapRoute(name: "CityStateCategoryResults", url: "{city}-{state}/{category}/{searchTerm}", defaults: new { controller = "Results", action = "SearchCityStateCategory" });
This works well when the cities do not have dashes ("-") in them, however I am now changing the way multiple cities are displayed in the URL from having an underscore between them, to now having dashes.
So, if the URL reads http://www.site.com/Gardena-Ceretos-Santa_Monica-California/someterm it the routes will no longer work.
How would I grab the state as everything after the last "-" and before the "/" in my routes to extract the state?
Looking at this now, I should have structured the URLS as /city-city-city/state/searchtearm, but for now, I have to stick with the current structure.
Thanks.

Answer 1

This is a situation where routing does not have any tools to assist you. There are two options.
First, change your token to {cityState}, make that the parameter in your action methods, and parse the cityState string in your controller actions.
Second, change your token to {cityState} (I promise, this is a different option), and then use a custom RouteHandler to parse the cityState string, and add city and state route tokens to pass to your existing actions. The RouteHandler would look like so:
using System.Web.Mvc;
using System.Web.Routing;
public class MyRouteHandler : IRouteHandler
{
public IHttpHandler GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext)
{
var routeData = requestContext.RouteData;
var cityState = routeData.Values["cityState"].ToString();
var parts = cityState.Split(new string[] { "-" }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
var state = parts.Last();
var citySb = new StringBuilder();
foreach (var part in parts)
{
if (part != state)
{
if (citySb.Length > 0)
citySb.Append("-");
citySb.Append(part);
}
}
routeData.Values.Add("city", citySb.ToString());
routeData.Values.Add("state", state);
var handler = new MvcHandler(requestContext);
return handler;
}
}
Then, change each of your routes to be similar to this:
routes.MapRoute(
"CityHomePage1",
new Route(
"{cityState}",
new RouteValueDictionary(
new { controller = "Home", action = "GeoHomePage" }),
new MyRouteHandler()
)
)
);