Given a URL, and I want to know which action in which controller is responsible for handling that URL. What I do right now is that I search for the route name in the project from visual studio. But I think there might be a package or tool that lists the routes and their corresponding Controller actions.
Is there a more neat way to find that:
url/examples/1
is handled by:
[HttpGet]
[Route("examples/{id}")]
public Task viewExmaple()
Try Swagger, as I think this will be as close as you can get in terms of "lists the routes and their corresponding Controller actions". By default, swagger acts a GUI (web page) that displays every controller with corresponding controller methods nested beneath(accordion style).
Swagger is also a great tool for debugging and testing. It displays details like which HTTP verb the methods use, which query string params (or JSON payload in body) the method accepts. Great for documentation as well.
Behind the scenes, swagger builds one giant JSON payload that nests all of your controller / controller actions so you may also be able to view it like that.
You would access it by hitting http(s)://your.app.path/swagger
Setting up in a .NET Standard (Non-Core) app
I have Swagger setup for an ASP.NET Core 2 MVC API application. I'm using OpenIddict for OAuth but want to customize how the request and responses appear on the documentation.
Since the method in the controller takes an OpenIdConnectRequest, the generated default output looks like so:
... and it just goes on and on.
This is a far cry from the neat JSON required for a client to consume since the middleware does a bunch of work inbetween the client and the controller method.
How do I change how Swagger represents these? I am already using a hack to massage the responses via a custom, private type for token responses, so any help on how to use that would also be appreciated. I have tried to use the SwaggerGenOptions.MapType<> function as the documentation claims that tells Swagger how to map a type to a custom output. Unfortunately, I've not gotten the Swagger output to reflect anything I've done with .MapType<>.
To be clear, these aren't models I control so I can't decorate the members myself.
Note that this is different from How to show WebApi OAuth token endpoint in Swagger. My controller action is discovered fine. Unfortunately, I'm thinking it may be easier to filter it out and use that as another work around to define it manually but I'd rather not if possible.
Is this possible to achieve?
I want to make a library (lets call it Foolib) that will automatically add an mvc controller with a fix route to all mvc applications that have a dependency on Foolib.
Foolib is to be used in several intranet applications that we are developing and I want to make sure that all applications that use of Foolib have an standard ability to receive a configuration object.
In Foolib there will be a controller something like:
public FooController
{
[Route("/Foo")]
public Post(object obj)
{
}
}
Would it be possible to register the controller automatically to all web applications that uses Foolib?
Normally the calls to register controllers are made in the Startup class, how would I hook in this extra controller, hopefully without having to burden the other mvc application developers with an "just add this line to your startup" solution?
According to the docs
"By default MVC will search the dependency tree and find controllers (even in other assemblies)."
So it should just work.
I need to create ASP.NET WebApi with couple operation, for example RegisterAppStart, RegisterStep and RegisterAppEnd. And I want to place all this actions in one controller. As I read, usually in WebApi action name is not using.
And my question - is this a bad idea to rewrite default route config with actions using?
ps. sorry for my English
You can give actions arbitrary names using the [Route("/api/FooController/BarMethod"] attribute routing.
This usually overrides the "REST"yness of your service (where the request method indicates which method should be called), but as you aren't really building a REST service, you shouldn't care.
I used to place my controllers into a separate Class Library project in Mvc Web Api. I used to add the following line in my web api project's global.asax to look for controllers in the separate project:
ControllerBuilder.Current.DefaultNamespaces.Add("MyClassLibraryProject.Controllers");
I never had to do any other configuration, except for adding the above line. This has always worked fine for me.
However I am unable to use the above method to do the same in WebApi2. It just doesn't work. The WebApi2 project still tries to find the controllers in its own project's controllers folder.
-- Giving little summary update after 2 months (As I started bounty on this):
I have created a WebApiOne solution, it has 2 projects, the first one is WebApi project, and the second is a class library for controllers. If I add the reference to the controllers class library project into the WebApi project, all works as expected. i.e. if i go to http://mydevdomain.com/api/values i can see the correct output.
I have now create a second project called WebApiTwo, it has 2 projects, the first one is WebApi2 project, and the second is a class library for controllers. If I add the reference to the controllers class library project to the WebApi2 project, it doest NOT work as expected. i.e. if i go to http://mydevdomain.com/api/values i get "No type was found that matches the controller named 'values'."
for the first project i am not doing any custom settings at all, i do NOT have:
ControllerBuilder.Current.DefaultNamespaces.Add("MyClassLibraryProject.Controllers");
in my global.asax, and i have not implemented any custom solutions proposed by StrathWeb in two of his blog posts, as i think its not applicable any more; because all works just by adding the reference of the controller project to the WebApi project.
So i would expect all to work same for WebApi2 ... but its not. Has anyone really tried doing this in WebAPi2 ?
I have just confirmed that this works fine. Things to check:
References: Does your main Web API project reference the external class library?
Routing: Have you set up any routes that might interfere with the external controllers?
Protection Level: Are the controllers in the external library public?
Inheritance: Do the controllers in the external library inherit from ApiController?
Versioning: Are both your Web API project and class library using the same version of the Web API libraries?
If it helps, I can package up my test solution and make it available to you.
Also, as a point to note, you don't need to tell Web API to find the controllers with the line you added to Global.asax, the system finds the controllers automatically provided you have them referenced.
It should work as is. Checklist
Inherit ApiController
End controller name with Controller. E.g. ValuesController
Make sure WebApi project and class library project reference same WebApi assemblies
Try to force routes using attribute routing
Clean the solution, manually remove bin folders and rebuild
Delete Temporary ASP.NET Files folders. WebApi and MVC cache controller lookup result
Call `config.MapHttpAttributeRoutes(); to ensure framework takes attribute routes into consideration
Make sure that the method you are calling is made to handle correct HTTP Verb (if it is a GET web method, you can call via browser URL, if it is POST you have to otherwise craft a web request)
This controller:
[RoutePrefix("MyValues")]
public class AbcController : ApiController
{
[HttpGet]
[Route("Get")]
public string Get()
{
return "Ok!";
}
}
matches this url:
http://localhost/MyValues/Get (note there is no /api/ in route because it wasn't specified in RoutePrefix.
Controller lookup caching:
This is default controller resolver. You will see in the source code that it caches lookup result.
/// <summary>
/// Returns a list of controllers available for the application.
/// </summary>
/// <returns>An <see cref="ICollection{Type}" /> of controllers.</returns>
public override ICollection<Type> GetControllerTypes(IAssembliesResolver assembliesResolver)
{
HttpControllerTypeCacheSerializer serializer = new HttpControllerTypeCacheSerializer();
// First, try reading from the cache on disk
List<Type> matchingTypes = ReadTypesFromCache(TypeCacheName, IsControllerTypePredicate, serializer);
if (matchingTypes != null)
{
return matchingTypes;
}
...
}
Was running into same scenario and #justmara set me on the right path. Here's how to accomplish the force loading of the dependent assemblies from #justmara's answer:
1) Override the DefaultAssembliesResolver class
public class MyNewAssembliesResolver : DefaultAssembliesResolver
{
public override ICollection<Assembly> GetAssemblies()
{
ICollection<Assembly> baseAssemblies = base.GetAssemblies();
List<Assembly> assemblies = new List<Assembly>(baseAssemblies);
var controllersAssembly = Assembly.LoadFrom(#"Path_to_Controller_DLL");
baseAssemblies.Add(controllersAssembly);
return baseAssemblies;
}
}
2) In the configuration section, replace the default with the new implementation
config.Services.Replace(typeof(IAssembliesResolver), new MyNewAssembliesResolver());
I cobbled this syntax together using pointers from this blog:
http://www.strathweb.com/2013/08/customizing-controller-discovery-in-asp-net-web-api/
As others have said, you know if you are running into this issue if you force the controller to load by directly referencing it. Another way is to example the results of CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies() and see if your assembly is in the list.
Also: If you are self-hosting using OWIN components you WILL run into this. When testing keep in mind that the DefaultAssembliesResolver will NOT kick in until the first WebAPI request is submitted (it took me awhile to realize that).
Are you sure that your referenced assembly was loaded BEFORE IAssembliesResolver service called?
Try to insert some dummy code in your application, something like
var a = new MyClassLibraryProject.Controllers.MyClass();
in configuration method (but don`t forget, that compiler can "optimize" this code and totally remove it, if "a" is never used).
I've had similar issue with assembly loading order. Ended up with force loading dependent assemblies on startup.
You need to tell webapi/mvc to load your referrenced assembly. You do that with the compilation/assemblies section in your web.config.
<compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.5.2">
<assemblies>
<add assembly="XYZ.SomeAssembly" />
</assemblies>
</compilation>
Simple as that. You can do it with code the way #user1821052 suggested, but this web.config version will have the same effect.
Apart from what has been said already:
Make sure you don't have two controllers of the same name in different namespaces.
Just had the case where one controller (foo.UserApiController) should be partially migrated to a new namespace (bar.UserApiController) and URI. The old controller was mapped by convention to /userapi, the new one was attribute-routed via RoutePrefix["api/users"]. The new controller didn't work until I renamed it to bar.UserFooApiController.
When using AttributeRouting it is easily forgettable to decorate your methods with the Route Attribute, especially when you are using the RoutePrefix Attribute on your controller class. It seems like your controller assembly wasn't picked up by the web api pipeline then.
If your class library is built with EF then make sure you have the connection string specified in the App.config for the class library project, AND in the Web.config for your Web API MVC project.