Properly handling nested resources in ASP.net MVC 4 WebApi routing

Question

I'd like to provide REST API in this way:

GET /api/devices
POST /api/devices
PUT /api/devices/1
DELETE /api/devices/1

This is my configuration:

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

And these are the actions:

public IEnumerable<Device> Get()
{
//return all devices
}

public Devices Get(id)
{
//return a specific devices
}

and so on.

The issue appears when I want to handle nested resources:

GET /api/devices/1/readings
POST /api/devices/1/readings
GET /api/devices/1/readings/1
PUT /api/devices/1/readings/1
DELETE /api/devices/1/readings/1

This is my configration for these:

config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
    name: "NestedApi",
    routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{parentResourceId}/{action}/{id}",
    defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional }
);

The issue shows up when trying to GET and POST to the nested resource:

[HttpGet]
public String Readings(int parentResourceId)
{
   //return a list of readings for the device
}

[HttpPost]
public String Readings(int parentResourceId)
{
    //create and return the id of a reading for the device
}

This is, of course, failing because there are two actions with the same signature.

I'd like to hear from a way of accomplishing this with the most RESTful approach

This looks like a duplicate of stackoverflow.com/q/10783946/326110 and stackoverflow.com/questions/9594671/… — mo.
– mo., Commented Oct 9, 2013 at 15:39

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 12:09:00Z

7

Microsoft is adding Attribute Routing to increase the flexibility of the routing system. Have a look at their documentation on Scenario 3

There is also some answers on Stack Overflow like:

How to handle hierarchical routes in ASP.NET Web API?

edited May 23, 2017 at 12:09

CommunityBot

11 silver badge

answered Jul 5, 2013 at 17:28

oeoren

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Comments

Badrinarayanan Lakshmiraghavan · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-05 17:40:37Z

2

There are solutions based on specifying route mappings but if you want more a more generic solution, this is by far the best solution I have seen related to this topic. Of course, Web API 2 has attribute routing.

edited Jul 5, 2013 at 17:40

answered Jul 5, 2013 at 17:29

Badrinarayanan Lakshmiraghavan

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