Creating a URL in the controller .NET MVC

I need to be able to construct a link in the Action on the controller to send an email. What is best practice to do this? I don't want to construct it myself in case my routes change.

Should I have a view for each email and render that and send it? That might be a good way of doing it.

If you just want to get the path to a certain action, use UrlHelper:

UrlHelper u = new UrlHelper(this.ControllerContext.RequestContext);
string url = u.Action("About", "Home", null);

if you want to create a hyperlink:

string link = HtmlHelper.GenerateLink(this.ControllerContext.RequestContext, System.Web.Routing.RouteTable.Routes, "My link", "Root", "About", "Home", null, null);

Intellisense will give you the meaning of each of the parameters.

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Update from comments: controller already has a UrlHelper:

string url = this.Url.Action("About", "Home", null); 

If you need the full url (for instance to send by email) consider using one of the following built-in methods:

With this you create the route to use to build the url:

Url.RouteUrl("OpinionByCompany", new RouteValueDictionary(new{cid=newop.CompanyID,oid=newop.ID}), HttpContext.Request.Url.Scheme, HttpContext.Request.Url.Authority)

Here the url is built after the route engine determine the correct one:

Url.Action("Detail","Opinion",new RouteValueDictionary(new{cid=newop.CompanyID,oid=newop.ID}),HttpContext.Request.Url.Scheme, HttpContext.Request.Url.Authority)

In both methods, the last 2 parameters specifies the protocol and hostname.

Regards.

I had the same issue, and it appears Gidon's answer has one tiny flaw: it generates a relative URL, which cannot be sent by mail.

My solution looks like this:

string link = HttpContext.Request.Url.Scheme + "://" + HttpContext.Request.Url.Authority + Url.Action("ResetPassword", "Account", new { key = randomString });

This way, a full URL is generated, and it works even if the application is several levels deep on the hosting server, and uses a port other than 80.

EDIT: I found this useful as well.

Another way to create an absolute URL to an action:

var relativeUrl = Url.Action("MyAction");  //..or one of the other .Action() overloads
var currentUrl = Request.Url;

var absoluteUrl = new System.Uri(currentUrl, relativeUrl);

I know this is an old question, but just in case you are trying to do the same thing in ASP.NET Core, here is how you can create the UrlHelper inside an action:

var urlHelper = new UrlHelper(this.ControllerContext);

Or, you could just use the Controller.Url property if you inherit from Controller.