Custom method names in ASP NET Web API

Question

I m converting from the WCF Web API to the new ASP NET MVC 4 Web API  I have a UsersController  and I want to have a method named Authenticate  I see examples of how to do GetAll  GetOne  Post  and Delete  however what if I want to add extra methods into these services  For instance  my UsersService should have a method called Authenticate where they pass in a username and password  however it doesn t work   public class UsersController   BaseApiController       public string GetAll                 return  getall               public string Get int id                return  get 1      id             public User GetAuthenticate string userName  string password  string applicationName                LogWriter Write String Format  Received authenticate request for username  0  and password  1  and application  2                userName  password  applicationName               check if valid leapfrog login          var decodedUsername   userName Replace   40                 var encodedPassword   password Length  gt  0   Utility HashString password    String Empty          var leapFrogUsers   LeapFrogUserData FindAll decodedUsername  encodedPassword            if  leapFrogUsers Count  gt  0                        return new User                               Id    uint leapFrogUsers 0  Id                  Guid   leapFrogUsers 0  Guid                                  else             throw new HttpResponseException  Invalid login credentials              I can browse to myapi api users  and it will call GetAll and I can browse to myapi api users 1 and it will call Get  however if I call myapi api users authenticate username  0  amp password  1  then it will call Get  NOT Authenticate  and error      The parameters dictionary contains a null entry for parameter  id  of non-nullable type  System Int32  for method  System String Get Int32   in  Navtrak Services WCF NavtrakAPI Controllers UsersController   An optional parameter must be a reference type  a nullable type  or be declared as an optional parameter    How can I call custom method names such as Authenticate

User · Answer

I am days into the MVC4 world   For what its worth  I have a SitesAPIController  and I needed a custom method  that could be called like   http   localhost 9000 api SitesAPI Disposition 0   With different values for the last parameter to get record with different dispositions   What Finally worked for me was   The method in the SitesAPIController      GET api SitesAPI Disposition 1  ActionName  Disposition     HttpGet  public Site Disposition int disposition        Site site   db Sites Where s   gt  s Disposition    disposition  First        return site      And this in the WebApiConfig cs     this was already there config Routes MapHttpRoute      name   DefaultApi       routeTemplate   api  controller   id        defaults  new   id   RouteParameter Optional          this i added config Routes MapHttpRoute      name   Action       routeTemplate   api  controller   action   disposition         For as long as I was naming the  disposition  as  id  i was encountering      Message    No HTTP resource was found that matches the request URI  http   localhost 9000 api SitesAPI Disposition 0      MessageDetail    No action was found on the controller  SitesAPI  that matches the request       When I renamed it to  disposition  it started working   So apparently the parameter name is matched with the value in the placeholder   Feel free to edit this answer to make it more accurate explanatory

User · Answer

Just modify your WebAPIConfig cs as bellow  Routes MapHttpRoute    name   DefaultApi     routeTemplate   api  controller   action   id      defaults  new   action    get   id   RouteParameter Optional       Then implement your API as bellow         GET  api Controller Name Show 1      ActionName  Show         HttpGet      public EventPlanner Id int id

User · Answer

In case you re using ASP NET 5 with ASP NET MVC 6  most of these answers simply won t work because you ll normally let MVC create the appropriate route collection for you  using the default RESTful conventions   meaning that you won t find any Routes MapRoute   call to edit at will   The ConfigureServices   method invoked by the Startup cs file will register MVC with the Dependency Injection framework built into ASP NET 5  that way  when you call ApplicationBuilder UseMvc   later in that class  the MVC framework will automatically add these default routes to your app  We can take a look of what happens behind the hood by looking at the UseMvc   method implementation within the framework source code   public static IApplicationBuilder UseMvc       NotNull  this IApplicationBuilder app       NotNull  Action lt IRouteBuilder gt  configureRoutes           Verify if AddMvc was done before calling UseMvc        We use the MvcMarkerService to make sure if all the services were added      MvcServicesHelper ThrowIfMvcNotRegistered app ApplicationServices        var routes   new RouteBuilder               DefaultHandler   new MvcRouteHandler            ServiceProvider   app ApplicationServices             configureRoutes routes           Adding the attribute route comes after running the user-code because        we want to respect any changes to the DefaultHandler      routes Routes Insert 0  AttributeRouting CreateAttributeMegaRoute          routes DefaultHandler          app ApplicationServices         return app UseRouter routes Build         The good thing about this is that the framework now handles all the hard work  iterating through all the Controller s Actions and setting up their default routes  thus saving you some redundant work   The bad thing is  there s little or no documentation about how you could add your own routes  Luckily enough  you can easily do that by using either a Convention-Based and or an Attribute-Based approach  aka Attribute Routing    Convention-Based  In your Startup cs class  replace this   app UseMvc      with this   app UseMvc routes   gt                                   Route Sample A                 routes MapRoute                      name   RouteSampleA                       template   MyOwnGet                       defaults  new   controller    Items   action    Get                                          Route Sample B                 routes MapRoute                      name   RouteSampleB                       template   MyOwnPost                       defaults  new   controller    Items   action    Post                                         Attribute-Based  A great thing about MVC6 is that you can also define routes on a per-controller basis by decorating either the Controller class and or the Action methods with the appropriate RouteAttribute and or HttpGet   HttpPost template parameters  such as the following   using System  using System Collections Generic  using System Linq  using System Threading Tasks  using Microsoft AspNet Mvc   namespace MyNamespace Controllers        Route  api  controller         public class ItemsController   Controller                  GET  api items          HttpGet            public IEnumerable lt string gt  Get                         return GetLatestItems                          GET  api items 5          HttpGet   num             public IEnumerable lt string gt  Get int num                        return GetLatestItems 5                                GET  api items GetLatestItems          HttpGet  GetLatestItems            public IEnumerable lt string gt  GetLatestItems                         return GetLatestItems 5                         GET api items GetLatestItems 5          HttpGet  GetLatestItems  num             public IEnumerable lt string gt  GetLatestItems int num                        return new string      test    test2                           POST   api items PostSomething          HttpPost  PostSomething            public IActionResult Post  FromBody string someData                        return Content  OK  got it                         This controller will handle the following requests     GET  api items   GET  api items 5   GET  api items GetLatestItems   GET  api items GetLatestItems 5   POST  api items PostSomething   Also notice that if you use the two approaches togheter  Attribute-based routes  when defined  would override Convention-based ones  and both of them would override the default routes defined by UseMvc     For more info  you can also read the following post on my blog

User · Answer

See this article for a longer discussion of named actions  It also shows that you can use the  HttpGet  attribute instead of prefixing the action name with  get    http   www asp net web-api overview web-api-routing-and-actions routing-in-aspnet-web-api

User · Answer

Web APi 2 and later versions support a new type of routing  called attribute routing  As the name implies  attribute routing uses attributes to define routes  Attribute routing gives you more control over the URIs in your web API  For example  you can easily create URIs that describe hierarchies of resources   For example    Route  customers  customerId  orders    public IEnumerable lt Order gt  GetOrdersByCustomer int customerId            Will perfect and you don t need any extra code for example in WebApiConfig cs  Just you have to be sure web api routing is enabled or not in WebApiConfig cs   if not you can activate like below              Web API routes         config MapHttpAttributeRoutes      You don t have to do something more or change something in WebApiConfig cs  For more details you can have a look this article

User · Answer

Web Api by default expects URL in the form of api  controller   id   to override this default routing  you can set routing with any of below two ways   First option    Add below route registration in WebApiConfig cs  config Routes MapHttpRoute      name   CustomApi       routeTemplate   api  controller   action   id        defaults  new   id   RouteParameter Optional        Decorate your action method with HttpGet and parameters as below   HttpGet  public HttpResponseMessage ReadMyData string param1                          string param2  string param3          your code here      for calling above method url will be like below  http   localhost  yourport  api MyData ReadMyData param1 value1 amp param2 value2 amp param3 value3  Second option Add route prefix to Controller class and Decorate your action method with HttpGet as below   In this case no need change any  WebApiConfig cs  It can have default routing    RoutePrefix  api  controller   action     public class MyDataController   ApiController     HttpGet  public HttpResponseMessage ReadMyData string param1                          string param2  string param3         your code here         for calling above method url will be like below  http   localhost  yourport  api MyData ReadMyData param1 value1 amp param2 value2 amp param3 value3

User · Answer

This is the best method I have come up with so far to incorporate extra GET methods while supporting the normal REST methods as well   Add the following routes to your WebApiConfig   routes MapHttpRoute  DefaultApiWithId    Api  controller   id    new   id   RouteParameter Optional    new   id      d       routes MapHttpRoute  DefaultApiWithAction    Api  controller   action     routes MapHttpRoute  DefaultApiGet    Api  controller    new   action    Get     new   httpMethod   new HttpMethodConstraint HttpMethod Get      routes MapHttpRoute  DefaultApiPost    Api  controller    new  action    Post    new  httpMethod   new HttpMethodConstraint HttpMethod Post       I verified this solution with the test class below   I was able to successfully hit each method in my controller below   public class TestController   ApiController       public string Get                 return string Empty             public string Get int id                return string Empty             public string GetAll                 return string Empty             public void Post  FromBody string value                   public void Put int id   FromBody string value                   public void Delete int id                  I verified that it supports the following requests   GET  Test GET  Test 1 GET  Test GetAll POST  Test PUT  Test 1 DELETE  Test 1   Note That if your extra GET actions do not begin with  Get  you may want to add an HttpGet attribute to the method

User · Answer

By default the route configuration follows RESTFul conventions meaning that it will accept only the Get  Post  Put and Delete action names  look at the route in global asax   gt  by default it doesn t allow you to specify any action name   gt  it uses the HTTP verb to dispatch   So when you send a GET request to  api users authenticate you are basically calling the Get int id  action and passing id authenticate which obviously crashes because your Get action expects an integer  If you want to have different action names than the standard ones you could modify your route definition in global asax  Routes MapHttpRoute      name   quot DefaultApi quot       routeTemplate   quot api  controller   action   id  quot       defaults  new   action    quot get quot   id   RouteParameter Optional       Now you can navigate to  api users getauthenticate to authenticate the user

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