Can a Web API controller GETter for query strings be generic?

Question

From Microsoft's CRUD tutorial for their Web API:

Finally, add a method to find products by category:

public IEnumerable<Product> GetProductsByCategory(string category)
{
    return repository.GetAll().Where(
            p => string.Equals(p.Category, category, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase));
}

If the request URI has a query string, Web API tries to match the query parameters to parameters on the controller method. Therefore, a URI of the form "api/products?category=category" will map to this method.

Is there any way to make this generic? As in GetProductsByWhateverIsInTheURI(string WhateverIsInTheURI) or "api/products?whatever=whatever"?

Thank you.

What exactly are you trying to make generic? What is the purpose of GetProductsByWhateverIsInTheURI? — m.edmondson
– m.edmondson, Commented Nov 5, 2013 at 18:41
That particular method is mapped to only handle ?category=_category_ as a query string in the URI. This is mapped to `GetProductsByCategory(string category) because the name of the parameter matches the one queried for in the URI. I was trying to figure out if there's a way to accept any sort of parameter in one generic method. — nzondlo
– nzondlo, Commented Nov 5, 2013 at 18:45

Snixtor · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-05 22:32:04Z

2

I'm not sure I'd describe it as "generic", but you could just have a catch-all route that does away with parameter binding altogether. This would be a method that will "accept any sort of parameter in one method".

public IEnumerable<string> Get()
{
    List<string> retval = new List<string>();

    var qryPairs = Request.GetQueryNameValuePairs();
    foreach (var q in qryPairs)
    {
        retval.Add("Key: " + q.Key + " Value: " + q.Value);
    }

    return retval;
}

answered Nov 5, 2013 at 22:32

Snixtor

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2 Comments

nzondlo Over a year ago

Sorry I missed this a while ago... This is good, but I also need to match the key's value (based on the key's name) against the key with that value in the repository (Like the .Where() up there demonstrates). How could I modify this code to do that? Or am I just not seeing it.

Snixtor Over a year ago

There's a number of ways you could go about that. Something like this should get you started - pastebin.com/Y2qYiRnw

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