Web API 2 / MVC 5 : Attribute Routing passing parameters as querystring to target different actions on same controller

Question

I've been playing with the new Web API 2 (which looks very promising btw) but I'm having a bit of a headache to get some routes working. All works fine when I have GetAllUsers / GetUser(int id), but then when I add GetUserByName(string name) and/or GetUserByUsername(string username) things start to be creepy. I know that the int will be the first one and that I can re-order the routes but let's imagine the following scenario:

A user can have a valid username=1234 or name=1234 (I know it's unlikely but we need to prevent any possible situation) and we might have a valid 1234 ID in the database and all the routes will be mixed up.

Maybe this is something that we will need to work with on the new WebAPI 2 so I thought I could come with an "workaround" passing filters as querystrings to target different action in the same controller, such as api/users/?username=1234 (GetUserByUsername) or api/users/?name=1234 (GetUserByName)

But I cannot make querystrings to come through ... actually any querystring option above is getting caught by the GetAllUsers.

Does anyone have any suggestion/fix for that scenario?

Thanks a lot

jd4u · Accepted Answer · 2013-10-16 08:15:34Z

13

You need to define the method access name like

[HttpGet("User")]
public async Task<UserViewModel> GetByName(string name)
[HttpGet("User")]
public async Task<UserViewModel> GetByUserName(string name)

//You can access like 
//- api/Users/User?name=someneme
//- api/Users/User?username=someneme

OR

[HttpGet("User")]
public async Task<UserViewModel> GetByAnyName(string name="", string username="")
//- api/Users/User?name=someneme
//- api/Users/User?username=someneme
//- api/Users/User?username=someneme&name=someone

UPDATED Above both will work nicely with other configurations of route prefix.

OR

[HttpGet("")]
public async Task<UserViewModel> GetAll()
[HttpGet("")]
public async Task<UserViewModel> Get(int id)
[HttpGet("")]
public async Task<UserViewModel> GetByName(string name)
[HttpGet("")]
public async Task<UserViewModel> GetByUserName(string name)

//You can access like 
//- api/Users/
//- api/Users/?id=123
//- api/Users/?name=someneme
//- api/Users/?username=someneme

edited Oct 16, 2013 at 8:15

answered Oct 16, 2013 at 7:26

jd4u

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4 Comments

julianox Over a year ago

Excellent! It's working now. Thanks for that ... i don't know what I've done wrong on my code :p Taking the opportunity, is there any benefit to use public async Task<UserViewModel> Get(int id) rather than public UserViewModel Get(int id)? as far as i know web api will use task on the pipeline anyway. cheers

jd4u Over a year ago

May be this help... hanselminutes.com/327/…

julianox Over a year ago

Thanks jd4u :D I've missed this episode, very helpful indeed. Cheers

JoeBrockhaus Over a year ago

Should the last example be GetByUserName(string username) or is some convention on the method name search matching the querystring with ?username=someone to the method name GetByUserName? In other words, I do not want the method name to force what the querystring param key should be; instead it should come from the method param name.

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