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Using POST or GET for a WebAPI Action method that returns a list, but requires params

Currently I have the following standard functions in each of my controllers to handle basic CRUD operations:
GET /api/todo Get all to-do items
GET /api/todo/{id} Get an item by ID
POST /api/todo Add a new item
PUT /api/todo/{id} Update an existing item
DELETE /api/todo/{id} Delete an item
However, the time came where I realized I actually need to pass multiple parameters to get a list of todo items that is filtered at the database level rather than retrieving all of the items and using linq.
For example here is how I decided to go about it:
In my Controller:
// POST: api/todo
[HttpPost]
public IList<TodoItem> Get([FromBody]GetTodoItemsRequest request)
{
return _todoItemManager.GetTodoItems(request.Name, request.CategoryId);
}
As you can see I created a new Model called GetTodoItemsRequest which will have a property for each of my parameters. In this case: Name, CategoryId.
I figured when dealing with multiple parameters and retrieving a list it is best to do POST and create a model specifically for it. Rather than using a GET and passing all kinds of information in the url.
It seems a bit strange to be doing the above... Would msot see it as a perfectly fine solution or is there something I am missing in the WebAPI world?

I believe that is semantically incorrect to use POST method for a simple read operation, even if you need a complex model. You are doing a pure query on your resource called todo, and this should really be a GET operation for many reasons:
It should be cachable: POST request aren't cachable by their nature, and caching is an important constraint in RESTful services.
It should semantically indicate that no side-effect will be raised from the call: GET requests must be idempotent and safe, POST operations, instead, indicate some kind of data manipulation. Your operation (filtering) is both idempotent and safe, so it should be spontaneously represented by a GET request.
The part of the URI after a ? character is called query string for a reason: it represent parameters that further specify the scope of a request. Well, isn't filtering results just an example of this approach?
Apart from that, it seems to me that, if Name and CategoryId are required parameters for your query, your filtering operation could be better represented by another URI in which Name and CategoryId are turned into route parameters:
http://yourhost.com/api/users/{name}/categories/{categoryId}/todos
Assuming a relationship between your name parameter (a user name maybe?) and the categories.
If, instead, your parameters are completely optional, then leaving them as query string parameters is the best choice:
http://yourhost.com/api/todos?name=nameValue&categoryId=categoryIdValue
A side note:
you should really use plural for your resources if they represents a collection of items: e.g. api/todo will return an array of todos, so you should rename it into api/todos.

Url.Action return the current link in browser

I am currently on the page /Customer/Edit/13244.
When I use #Url.Action("Edit", "Customer") on the same page it returns me /Customer/Edit/13244, but I want it to return /Customer/Edit/.
Kindly tell me how to fix this issue.

This is a "feature" of MVC that many people find unnatural and was previously reported as a bug.
Microsoft's official response:
Ultimately if you want the most control over what gets generated for a URL there are a few options to consider:
Use named routes to ensure that only the route you want will get used to generate the URL (this is often a good practice, though it won't help in this particular scenario)
Specify all route parameters explicitly - even the values that you want to be empty. That is one way to solve this particular problem.
Instead of using Routing to generate the URLs, you can use Razor's ~/ syntax or call Url.Content("~/someurl") to ensure that no extra (or unexpected) processing will happen to the URL you're trying to generate.
Actually, this bug only rears its ugly head when you try to re-purpose an action method name. If you use a different action method name other than Edit in the case where it is not followed by id, this problem will magically disappear.

You will need to use (assuming your using the default route with id = UrlParameter.Optional
#Url.Action("Edit", "Customer", new { id = "" })

web api 2 routing with version and route attributes

Within my project I have 2 versions of an API. From this Post I understand that a custom control selector needs writing so it get get the different versions (as webapi looks for controller name match and ignores the namespaces they are in).
This all works OK and I can make the calls to the different versions.
However, I also utilise the new data attribute routing from web api 2 and when using this the customer control selector does not handle the routing correctly.
The routing data attributes I am using are as follows.
(The V01 differs between the versions so it can be V02)
[Route("api/v01/enumeration/{type}/{subtype}")]
This can contain some additional query string params at the end as well
[Route("api/V01/user/readbyreference")]
this takes a query string of ?id=EMAIL|email.domain.com
The code for the customer control selector can be found here
I can see the issue is with GetRouteVariable to get the needed namespace part and controller, but I was wondering if anyone else has had to do something like this and if they have any way around it.
I will be looking into so if I find something I will update on here but if you have anything please let me know.
Thanks
Mark

After a bit of digging I have found out that attribute routing goes via a different path.
So to handle attribute routing in the GetRouteVariable you need to grab the MS_SubRoutes values and then perform the needed action on the result to get the namespace and controller.
The below needs tidying up but it at least gives you the idea of what is done to process data attribute routing in your custom control selector
var subroutes = (IEnumerable<IHttpRouteData>)routeData.Values["MS_SubRoutes"];
var routeBreakDown= subroutes.First().Route.RouteTemplate.Split('/');
if (name == "namespace")
{
return (T)(object)routeBreakDown[1]; //namespace
}
else if (name == "controller")
{
return (T)(object)routeBreakDown[2]; //controller
}
Cheers
Mark

What is wrong with my MVC4 Routes, Parameters, constructors?

I have a problem with a small app i am writing. Now either my error is in my controller class or its in Routes. See images below.
Controller Class.
This is the default Route i have.
And this is the error i get when i run.
Image not very clear but it says:
The parameters dictionary contains a null entry for parameter 'playerId' of non-nullable type 'System.Int32' for method 'System.Web.Mvc.ActionResult Detail(Int32)' in 'GlobalUnited.WebUI.Controllers.PlayerController'. An optional parameter must be a reference type, a nullable type, or be declared as an optional parameter.
Parameter name: parameters
I read through some posts on here, one particularly:
Similar Link
What exactly does he mean when Daniel Renshaw says:
First, I would suggest you use MVC's automatic handling of parameters instead ofpulling them out of the Request yourself. Your controller action has an id parameter which seems to go ignored - use that and add others like it to get the input parameters.
Anyways, after reading that post, i changed my RouteConfig file to:
And Still i got this error. It says:
A route named 'DefaultApi' is already in the route collection. Route names must be unique.
Parameter name: name
I even tried to change my Detail action parameter to: Note the int? declaration
And i got this error after changing:
Is there something i could do to fix this, something less complicated??
All help will be appreciated, thanks.

Your parameter name playerID causes the problem here. ASP.NET MVC can only provide you a parameter named id using the default route. In your case, it cannot map the request to your action because playerID is not nullable or optional. Changing your parameter name to id will solve the problem.
public ActionResult Detail(int id)
You get the second error with route registration because you already have a route named "DefaultApi". You won't need this route if you change the parameter name(also it's registered elsewhere).
Third error is for trying to querying with the null value. ASP.NET MVC cannot map the value in URL to your parameter and you get the default value null. Since there isn't a row with a null value you get an empty sequence, then Single() method throws an exception.

As your parameter is called playerId you must pass it as a route value to the Detail action method and then check if it's null or not. This will take care of that last error you show in your question: Sequence contains no element.
Do this in the action method:
public ActionResult Detail(int? playerId)
{
if(playerId.HasValue)
{
var model = _dataSource.Players.Single(p => p.PlayerId == playerId);
return View(model);
}
// Handle the other possibility where playerId is NULL
}
For ASP.NET MVC to know how to do the correct parameter binding you must call the above action method this way, for example:
#Html.ActionLink("Player Details", "Detail", new { playerId = 1 });

Other than the duplicate route error, your errors have nothing to do with the DefaultApi route. You get a duplicate route because that route is configured in App_Start\WebApiConfig.cs
Your first problem is that you are telling MVC that you have a mandatory Route parameter called playerId, but you are not supplying this route parameter in the URL you're using. In order for this to work you would need to either alter your route to change id to playerId, or add a playerId querystring parameter to your url. If you alter the route, you would need a url like http://my.site/Player/Detail/1 (if you alter the route) or http://my.site/Player/Detail?playerId=1.
Another option is changing the parameter to public ActionResult Detail(int id) which would then use the existing default route that takes a single parameter called id and extracts it from the friendly url that ends in /1.
You could also make the method Detail(int? id), but then you would need to place a null guard around your linq query (because if you don't pass the ID on the URL it can't lookup a null record) so you would have to add this:
if (id.HasValue) {
// execute linq query
}
Alternatively, you could alter your query to return SingleOrDefault() rather than Single().

How to get all active parameters in ASP.NET MVC (2)

I was wondering whether there is a way to create an ActionLink or similar, that changes only a few parameters of the actual query, and keeps all the other parameters intact. For example if I'm on an URL like http://example.com/Posts/Index?Page=5&OrderBy=Name&OrderDesc=True I want to change only the Page, or OrderBy parameter and keep all other parameters the same, even those I don't yet know of (like when I want to add a Search parameter or something similar too).
The header of my current action looks like this:
public ActionResult Index(int? Page, string OrderBy, bool? Desc)
and I'm only interested in the values that this controller "eats". I want however that when I extend this action (for example with a string Search parameter) the links should work the same way as before.
Here is what I did already:
Create a new RouteValueDictionary and fill it with everything from RouteData.Values
Problem: This only fills the parameters that are used in the Routing, so all other optional parameters (like Page) to the controller are lost
Add everything from HttpContext.Request.QueryString to the previous dictionary
This is what I am currently using
Problem: It might have some junk stuff, that the Controller didn`t ask for, and it doesn't work if the page was loaded using POST. You also don't have any ModelBindings (but this isn't much of a problem, because we are re-sending everything anyway)
Use HttpContext.Request.Params
Problem: this has too much junk data which imho one shouldn't add to a RouteValueDictionary that is passed to an ActionLink
So the questions:
Is there an RVD that has all the data that was passed to the Controller and was used by it?
Is this solution good, or are there any caveats I didn't think about (mainly in the context of changing a few query parameters while keeping the others intact)?
Is there a way to filter out the "junk" data from the Params object?
EDIT: Checked the RouteData.DataTokens variable, but it's usually empty, and doesn't contain everything I need. It seems to only contain parameters that are needed for the routing somewhere, but not all of the parameters.

Have a look in RouteData.DataTokens.
RouteData.DataTokens # MSDN documentation:
Gets a collection of custom values that are passed to the route handler but are not used when ASP.NET routing determines whether the route matches a request.
HTHs,
Charles