Pass an array of integers to ASP.NET Web API?

Question

I have an ASP.NET Web API (version 4) REST service where I need to pass an array of integers.

Here is my action method:

Answer 1

My solution was to create an attribute to validate strings, it does a bunch of extra common features, including regex validation that you can use to check for numbers only and then later I convert to integers as needed...

This is how you use:

public class MustBeListAndContainAttribute : ValidationAttribute
{
    private Regex regex = null;
    public bool RemoveDuplicates { get; }
    public string Separator { get; }
    public int MinimumItems { get; }
    public int MaximumItems { get; }

    public MustBeListAndContainAttribute(string regexEachItem,
        int minimumItems = 1,
        int maximumItems = 0,
        string separator = ",",
        bool removeDuplicates = false) : base()
    {
        this.MinimumItems = minimumItems;
        this.MaximumItems = maximumItems;
        this.Separator = separator;
        this.RemoveDuplicates = removeDuplicates;

        if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(regexEachItem))
            regex = new Regex(regexEachItem, RegexOptions.Compiled | RegexOptions.Singleline | RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);
    }

    protected override ValidationResult IsValid(object value, ValidationContext validationContext)
    {
        var listOfdValues = (value as List)?[0];

        if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(listOfdValues))
        {
            if (MinimumItems > 0)
                return new ValidationResult(this.ErrorMessage);
            else
                return null;
        };

        var list = new List();

        list.AddRange(listOfdValues.Split(new[] { Separator }, System.StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries));

        if (RemoveDuplicates) list = list.Distinct().ToList();

        var prop = validationContext.ObjectType.GetProperty(validationContext.MemberName);
        prop.SetValue(validationContext.ObjectInstance, list);
        value = list;

        if (regex != null)
            if (list.Any(c => string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(c) || !regex.IsMatch(c)))
                return new ValidationResult(this.ErrorMessage);

        return null;
    }
}