Web.API MapHttpRoute parameters

Question

I\'m having problems with my Web.API routing. I have the following two routes:

config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
    name: \"Me         


        

Answer 1

From http://www.asp.net/web-api/overview/web-api-routing-and-actions/routing-and-action-selection

You can also provide constraints, which restrict how a URI segment can match a placeholder:

constraints: new { id = @"\d+" } // Only matches if "id" is one or more digits.

Adding this constraint to "MethodOne" (api/{controller}/{action}/{id}/{type}) would mean that numbers it only matches if {id} is a number otherwise it would match "MethodTwo" ("api/{controller}/{action}/{directory}/{report}").

Answer 2

The reason you are seeing this problem is because your first route will match both requests. The id and type token in the URL will match both requests because when the route is being run, it will try parse the URL and match each segment against your URL.

So your first route will happily match both requests as follows.

~/methodone/1/mytype => action = methodone, id = 1, and type = mytype
~/methodtwo/directory/report => action = methodtwo, id = directory, and type = report

To work around this, you should use route like

config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
    name: "MethodOne",
    routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/methodone/{id}/{type}",
    defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional, type = RouteParameter.Optional }
);

config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
    name: "MethodTwo",
    routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/methodtwo/{directory}/{report}",
    defaults: new { directory = RouteParameter.Optional, report = RouteParameter.Optional }
);

Even if you use WebGet, you might need to do something similarly to disambiguous those two methods I believe.

Answer 3

You can choose to pass the parameters in the query string like /MethodTwo?directory=a&report=b, but if you'd rather they show up in the path, this looks like a good candidate for attribute-based routing. Filip has a great post about it here:

http://www.strathweb.com/2012/05/attribute-based-routing-in-asp-net-web-api/