Home controller default action name on Stackoverflow

Question

As we all know Asp.net MVC creates some defaults for us when we create a new Asp.net MVC project:

• Default controller is HomeController
• Default action Index

But I've noticed that although Stackoverflow did keep the HomeController it didn't keep Index as the default action.

http://www.stackoverflow.com/home - works
http://www.stackoverflow.com/home/index - fails

I don't like the name (Index) of the default action either, that's why I'm looking for other possibilities and am wondering what's Stackoverflow's default action name?

Answer 1

It can indeed Be index but if they remove the default route or replace it with the following code, then you have the same effect.

Since stackoverflow.com/Home we know that they use this route:

routes.MapRoute(
    "Default", "{controller}",
    new { controller="", action="Index" }
);

What this route does, is that if you have what would normally be:

stackoverflow.com/home/index
stackoverflow.com/questions/ndex
stackoverflow.com/users/index

You'd be able to get to the index action by omitting the index. Indeed, if you took out the default route, that's the way you'd get to the index action:

stackoverflow.com/home
stackoverflow.com/questions
stackoverflow.com/users

To answer your question, I gather that they also have the following route:

routes.MapRoute(
    "Default", "",
    new { controller = "Home", action = "Index" } 
);

Answer 2

I don't know but I hope they've filtered out the exceptions caused by invalid controller/action parameters from their ELMAH email. I imagine this question will create a flood of invalid requests as people try to guess the index action.