I would like to encode the URL (excluding the origin) of all the requests to Base64. Whenever a request is made it should decode the URL, find the respective Controller and Action and call it with the respective parameters.
Is there a function that I can overwrite (perhaps in global.asax or webapiconfig.cs) that will get called whenever a request is being made?
Assuming you work with asp.net mvc and all fancy .net core middleware are not a thing yet, you could look into custom handler.
You theoretically could write the bootstrap code directly in global.asax, but as it by default calls through to WebApiConfig.Register():
GlobalConfiguration.Configure(WebApiConfig.Register);
it's probably a better place for things to do with WebAPI.
App_Start/WebApiConfig.cs
public static class WebApiConfig
{
public static void Register(HttpConfiguration config)
{
// Web API configuration and services
// Web API routes
config.MessageHandlers.Add(new TestHandler()); // if you define a handler here it will kick in for ALL requests coming into your WebAPI (this does not affect MVC pages though)
config.MapHttpAttributeRoutes();
config.Services.Replace(typeof(IHttpControllerSelector), new MyControllerSelector(config)); // you likely will want to override some more services to ensure your logic is supported, this is one example
// your default routes
config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(name: "DefaultApi", routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{id}", defaults: new {id = RouteParameter.Optional});
//a non-overlapping endpoint to distinguish between requests. you can limit your handler to only kick in to this pipeline
config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(name: "Base64Api", routeTemplate: "apibase64/{query}", defaults: null, constraints: null
//, handler: new TestHandler() { InnerHandler = new HttpControllerDispatcher(config) } // here's another option to define a handler
);
}
}
and then define your handler:
TestHandler.cs
public class TestHandler : DelegatingHandler
{
protected override async Task<HttpResponseMessage> SendAsync(HttpRequestMessage request, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
{
//suppose we've got a URL like so: http://localhost:60290/api/VmFsdWVzCg==
var b64Encoded = request.RequestUri.AbsolutePath.Remove(0, "/apibase64/".Length);
byte[] data = Convert.FromBase64String(b64Encoded);
string decodedString = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(data); // this will decode to values
request.Headers.Add("controllerToCall", decodedString); // let us say this is the controller we want to invoke
HttpResponseMessage resp = await base.SendAsync(request, cancellationToken);
return resp;
}
}
Depending on what exactly you want your Handler to do, you might find that you will also have to supply your custom ControllerSelector implementation:
WebApiConfig.cs
// add this line in your Register method
config.Services.Replace(typeof(IHttpControllerSelector), new MyControllerSelector(config));
MyControllerSelector.cs
public class MyControllerSelector : DefaultHttpControllerSelector
{
public MyControllerSelector(HttpConfiguration configuration) : base(configuration)
{
}
public override string GetControllerName(HttpRequestMessage request)
{
//this is pretty minimal implementation that examines a header set from TestHandler and returns correct value
if (request.Headers.TryGetValues("controllerToCall", out var candidates))
return candidates.First();
else
{
return base.GetControllerName(request);
}
}
}
I don't know enough about your specific environment so this is far from being complete solution, but hopefully it outlines one avenue for you to explore
I'm working on an asp.net web api with hypermedia. Now I'm making a link creator that creates a link to a resource exposed by a controller. It should support attribute routes, which I've solved with reflection, but also mapped routes specified in Owin.AppBuilder:
public void Configuration(IAppBuilder appBuilder)
{
var config = new HttpConfiguration();
config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
name: "DefaultApi",
routeTemplate: "{controller}/{id}",
defaults: new { controller = "Home", id = RouteParameter.Optional }
);
// ...
}
I could use the UrlHelper class for this, but it depends on the current request, and the link I'm creating could be to another controller, and thus have no relationship with the current request. So what I need is to load the route configuration data for the route named DefaultApi. Is it any way to do this?
If you can use Route Attribute, you can name your route via a name property, what I did is I defined my routes in RoutesHelper and when I define my controller route, I reference this constant, and when I want to use CreatedAtRoute for example I reference the same routeName and pass the parameters to construct the route.
So let's say that my controller is called PeopleController, then I would define my controller as:
[Route("api/people/{id:int:min(1)?}", Name = RoutesHelper.RouteNames.People)]
public class PeopleController : ApiController
{
// controller code here
}
where RoutesHelper is like this:
public static class RoutesHelper
{
public struct RouteNames
{
public const string People = "People";
// etc...
}
}
Now in my Post method for example I use CreateAtRoute like this:
[HttpPost]
[ResponseType(typeof(PersonDto))]
public async Task<IHttpActionResult> AddAsync([FromBody] personDto dto)
{
// some code to map my dto to the entity using automapper, and save the new entity goes here
//.
//.
// here, I am mapping the saved entity to dto
var added = Mapper.Map<PersonDto>(person);
// this is where I reference the route by it's name and construct the route parameters.
var response = CreatedAtRoute(RoutesHelper.RouteNames.People, new { id = added.Id }, added);
return response;
}
Hope this helps.
I have an ApiController where I have 2 actions:
public IEnumerable<Users> GetUsers(){}
public IHttpActionResult UsersPagination(int startindex = 0, int size = 5, string sortby = "Username", string order = "DESC"){}
Since I have default routing like below:
config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
name: "DefaultApi",
routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{id}",
defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional }
);
I get the error:
Multiple actions were found that match the request:
GetUsers on type HomeBook.API.Controllers.UsersController
UsersPagination on type HomeBook.API.Controllers.UsersController
Basically, I want 2 actions in my controller: one that returns all users another returns a pagination form of users. Like here: http://dev.librato.com/v1/pagination
Please suggest how I can achieve this.
By default, WebApi uses a convention to map request to specific action methods. With the current setup it cannot decide which of the two methods should be used. You can read more about WebApi routing here - Routing in ASP.NET Web API
Once way to resolve such problems is to use Attribute Routing. As the name suggest with this technique attributes are used to control how requests are mapped to action methods. You can read more about Attribute routing here - http://www.asp.net/web-api/overview/web-api-routing-and-actions/attribute-routing-in-web-api-2
To solve your problem with attribute routing you can use the following setup:
[RoutePrefix("api/pagination")]
public class MyController
{
[HttpGet]
[Route("users")]
public IEnumerable<Users> GetUsers() { }
[HttpGet]
[Route("users-paginated")]
public IHttpActionResult UsersPagination(int startindex = 0, int size = 5, string sortby = "Username", string order = "DESC") { }
}
Now, if you make a request to api/pagination/users then GetUsers() will be invoked. Similarly, if you make a request to api/pagination/users-paginated then UsersPagination() will be invoked.
Using the new Api Controller in MVC4, and I've found a problem. If I have the following methods:
public IEnumberable<string> GetAll()
public IEnumberable<string> GetSpecific(int i)
This will work. However, if I want to retrieve some different data of a different type, it defaults to the GetAll method, even though the $.getJSON is set to the GetAllIntegers method:
public IEnumberable<int> GetAllIntergers()
(bad naming conventions)
Is it possible for me to be able to do this?
Can I only have a single GetAll method in the Web API controller?
I think it's easier to visualise what I'm trying to achieve. Here is a snippet of code to show what I'd like to be able to do, in a single ApiController:
public IEnumerable<string> GetClients()
{ // Get data
}
public IEnumerable<string> GetClient(int id)
{ // Get data
}
public IEnumerable<string> GetStaffMember(int id)
{ // Get data
}
public IEnumerable<string> GetStaffMembers()
{ // Get data
}
This is all in the routing. The default Web API route looks like this:
config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
name: "API Default",
routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{id}",
defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional }
);
With the default routing template, Web API uses the HTTP method to select the action. In result it will map a GET request with no parameters to first GetAll it can find. To work around this you need to define a route where the action name is included:
config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
name: "ActionApi",
routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{action}/{id}",
defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional }
);
After that you can star making requests with following URL's:
api/yourapicontroller/GetClients
api/yourapicontroller/GetStaffMembers
This way you can have multiple GetAll in Controller.
One more important thing here is that with this style of routing, you must use attributes to specify the allowed HTTP methods (like [HttpGet]).
There is also an option of mixing the default Web API verb based routing with traditional approach, it is very well described here:
Web API: Mixing Traditional & Verb-Based Routing
In case someone else faces this problem. Here's how I solved this. Use the [Route] attribute on your controller to route to a specific url.
[Route("api/getClient")]
public ClientViewModel GetClient(int id)
[Route("api/getAllClients")]
public IEnumerable<ClientViewModel> GetClients()
I'm converting from the WCF Web API to the new ASP.NET MVC 4 Web API. I have a UsersController, and I want to have a method named Authenticate. I see examples of how to do GetAll, GetOne, Post, and Delete, however what if I want to add extra methods into these services? For instance, my UsersService should have a method called Authenticate where they pass in a username and password, however it doesn't work.
public class UsersController : BaseApiController
{
public string GetAll()
{
return "getall!";
}
public string Get(int id)
{
return "get 1! " + id;
}
public User GetAuthenticate(string userName, string password, string applicationName)
{
LogWriter.Write(String.Format("Received authenticate request for username {0} and password {1} and application {2}",
userName, password, applicationName));
//check if valid leapfrog login.
var decodedUsername = userName.Replace("%40", "#");
var encodedPassword = password.Length > 0 ? Utility.HashString(password) : String.Empty;
var leapFrogUsers = LeapFrogUserData.FindAll(decodedUsername, encodedPassword);
if (leapFrogUsers.Count > 0)
{
return new User
{
Id = (uint)leapFrogUsers[0].Id,
Guid = leapFrogUsers[0].Guid
};
}
else
throw new HttpResponseException("Invalid login credentials");
}
}
I can browse to myapi/api/users/ and it will call GetAll and I can browse to myapi/api/users/1 and it will call Get, however if I call myapi/api/users/authenticate?username={0}&password={1} then it will call Get (NOT Authenticate) and error:
The parameters dictionary contains a null entry for parameter 'id' of non-nullable type 'System.Int32' for method 'System.String Get(Int32)' in 'Navtrak.Services.WCF.NavtrakAPI.Controllers.UsersController'. An optional parameter must be a reference type, a nullable type, or be declared as an optional parameter.
How can I call custom method names such as Authenticate?
By default the route configuration follows RESTFul conventions meaning that it will accept only the Get, Post, Put and Delete action names (look at the route in global.asax => by default it doesn't allow you to specify any action name => it uses the HTTP verb to dispatch). So when you send a GET request to /api/users/authenticate you are basically calling the Get(int id) action and passing id=authenticate which obviously crashes because your Get action expects an integer.
If you want to have different action names than the standard ones you could modify your route definition in global.asax:
Routes.MapHttpRoute(
name: "DefaultApi",
routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{action}/{id}",
defaults: new { action = "get", id = RouteParameter.Optional }
);
Now you can navigate to /api/users/getauthenticate to authenticate the user.
This is the best method I have come up with so far to incorporate extra GET methods while supporting the normal REST methods as well. Add the following routes to your WebApiConfig:
routes.MapHttpRoute("DefaultApiWithId", "Api/{controller}/{id}", new { id = RouteParameter.Optional }, new { id = #"\d+" });
routes.MapHttpRoute("DefaultApiWithAction", "Api/{controller}/{action}");
routes.MapHttpRoute("DefaultApiGet", "Api/{controller}", new { action = "Get" }, new { httpMethod = new HttpMethodConstraint(HttpMethod.Get) });
routes.MapHttpRoute("DefaultApiPost", "Api/{controller}", new {action = "Post"}, new {httpMethod = new HttpMethodConstraint(HttpMethod.Post)});
I verified this solution with the test class below. I was able to successfully hit each method in my controller below:
public class TestController : ApiController
{
public string Get()
{
return string.Empty;
}
public string Get(int id)
{
return string.Empty;
}
public string GetAll()
{
return string.Empty;
}
public void Post([FromBody]string value)
{
}
public void Put(int id, [FromBody]string value)
{
}
public void Delete(int id)
{
}
}
I verified that it supports the following requests:
GET /Test
GET /Test/1
GET /Test/GetAll
POST /Test
PUT /Test/1
DELETE /Test/1
Note That if your extra GET actions do not begin with 'Get' you may want to add an HttpGet attribute to the method.
I am days into the MVC4 world.
For what its worth, I have a SitesAPIController, and I needed a custom method, that could be called like:
http://localhost:9000/api/SitesAPI/Disposition/0
With different values for the last parameter to get record with different dispositions.
What Finally worked for me was:
The method in the SitesAPIController:
// GET api/SitesAPI/Disposition/1
[ActionName("Disposition")]
[HttpGet]
public Site Disposition(int disposition)
{
Site site = db.Sites.Where(s => s.Disposition == disposition).First();
return site;
}
And this in the WebApiConfig.cs
// this was already there
config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
name: "DefaultApi",
routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{id}",
defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional }
);
// this i added
config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
name: "Action",
routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{action}/{disposition}"
);
For as long as I was naming the {disposition} as {id} i was encountering:
{
"Message": "No HTTP resource was found that matches the request URI 'http://localhost:9000/api/SitesAPI/Disposition/0'.",
"MessageDetail": "No action was found on the controller 'SitesAPI' that matches the request."
}
When I renamed it to {disposition} it started working. So apparently the parameter name is matched with the value in the placeholder.
Feel free to edit this answer to make it more accurate/explanatory.
Web Api by default expects URL in the form of api/{controller}/{id}, to override this default routing. you can set routing with any of below two ways.
First option:
Add below route registration in WebApiConfig.cs
config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
name: "CustomApi",
routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{action}/{id}",
defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional }
);
Decorate your action method with HttpGet and parameters as below
[HttpGet]
public HttpResponseMessage ReadMyData(string param1,
string param2, string param3)
{
// your code here
}
for calling above method url will be like below
http://localhost:[yourport]/api/MyData/ReadMyData?param1=value1¶m2=value2¶m3=value3
Second option
Add route prefix to Controller class and Decorate your action method with HttpGet as below.
In this case no need change any WebApiConfig.cs. It can have default routing.
[RoutePrefix("api/{controller}/{action}")]
public class MyDataController : ApiController
{
[HttpGet]
public HttpResponseMessage ReadMyData(string param1,
string param2, string param3)
{
// your code here
}
}
for calling above method url will be like below
http://localhost:[yourport]/api/MyData/ReadMyData?param1=value1¶m2=value2¶m3=value3
In case you're using ASP.NET 5 with ASP.NET MVC 6, most of these answers simply won't work because you'll normally let MVC create the appropriate route collection for you (using the default RESTful conventions), meaning that you won't find any Routes.MapRoute() call to edit at will.
The ConfigureServices() method invoked by the Startup.cs file will register MVC with the Dependency Injection framework built into ASP.NET 5: that way, when you call ApplicationBuilder.UseMvc() later in that class, the MVC framework will automatically add these default routes to your app. We can take a look of what happens behind the hood by looking at the UseMvc() method implementation within the framework source code:
public static IApplicationBuilder UseMvc(
[NotNull] this IApplicationBuilder app,
[NotNull] Action<IRouteBuilder> configureRoutes)
{
// Verify if AddMvc was done before calling UseMvc
// We use the MvcMarkerService to make sure if all the services were added.
MvcServicesHelper.ThrowIfMvcNotRegistered(app.ApplicationServices);
var routes = new RouteBuilder
{
DefaultHandler = new MvcRouteHandler(),
ServiceProvider = app.ApplicationServices
};
configureRoutes(routes);
// Adding the attribute route comes after running the user-code because
// we want to respect any changes to the DefaultHandler.
routes.Routes.Insert(0, AttributeRouting.CreateAttributeMegaRoute(
routes.DefaultHandler,
app.ApplicationServices));
return app.UseRouter(routes.Build());
}
The good thing about this is that the framework now handles all the hard work, iterating through all the Controller's Actions and setting up their default routes, thus saving you some redundant work.
The bad thing is, there's little or no documentation about how you could add your own routes. Luckily enough, you can easily do that by using either a Convention-Based and/or an Attribute-Based approach (aka Attribute Routing).
Convention-Based
In your Startup.cs class, replace this:
app.UseMvc();
with this:
app.UseMvc(routes =>
{
// Route Sample A
routes.MapRoute(
name: "RouteSampleA",
template: "MyOwnGet",
defaults: new { controller = "Items", action = "Get" }
);
// Route Sample B
routes.MapRoute(
name: "RouteSampleB",
template: "MyOwnPost",
defaults: new { controller = "Items", action = "Post" }
);
});
Attribute-Based
A great thing about MVC6 is that you can also define routes on a per-controller basis by decorating either the Controller class and/or the Action methods with the appropriate RouteAttribute and/or HttpGet / HttpPost template parameters, such as the following:
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using Microsoft.AspNet.Mvc;
namespace MyNamespace.Controllers
{
[Route("api/[controller]")]
public class ItemsController : Controller
{
// GET: api/items
[HttpGet()]
public IEnumerable<string> Get()
{
return GetLatestItems();
}
// GET: api/items/5
[HttpGet("{num}")]
public IEnumerable<string> Get(int num)
{
return GetLatestItems(5);
}
// GET: api/items/GetLatestItems
[HttpGet("GetLatestItems")]
public IEnumerable<string> GetLatestItems()
{
return GetLatestItems(5);
}
// GET api/items/GetLatestItems/5
[HttpGet("GetLatestItems/{num}")]
public IEnumerable<string> GetLatestItems(int num)
{
return new string[] { "test", "test2" };
}
// POST: /api/items/PostSomething
[HttpPost("PostSomething")]
public IActionResult Post([FromBody]string someData)
{
return Content("OK, got it!");
}
}
}
This controller will handle the following requests:
[GET] api/items
[GET] api/items/5
[GET] api/items/GetLatestItems
[GET] api/items/GetLatestItems/5
[POST] api/items/PostSomething
Also notice that if you use the two approaches togheter, Attribute-based routes (when defined) would override Convention-based ones, and both of them would override the default routes defined by UseMvc().
For more info, you can also read the following post on my blog.
See this article for a longer discussion of named actions. It also shows that you can use the [HttpGet] attribute instead of prefixing the action name with "get".
http://www.asp.net/web-api/overview/web-api-routing-and-actions/routing-in-aspnet-web-api
Web APi 2 and later versions support a new type of routing, called attribute routing. As the name implies, attribute routing uses attributes to define routes. Attribute routing gives you more control over the URIs in your web API. For example, you can easily create URIs that describe hierarchies of resources.
For example:
[Route("customers/{customerId}/orders")]
public IEnumerable<Order> GetOrdersByCustomer(int customerId) { ... }
Will perfect and you don't need any extra code for example in WebApiConfig.cs.
Just you have to be sure web api routing is enabled or not in WebApiConfig.cs , if not you can activate like below:
// Web API routes
config.MapHttpAttributeRoutes();
You don't have to do something more or change something in WebApiConfig.cs. For more details you can have a look this article.
Just modify your WebAPIConfig.cs as bellow
Routes.MapHttpRoute(
name: "DefaultApi",
routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{action}/{id}",
defaults: new { action = "get", id = RouteParameter.Optional });
Then implement your API as bellow
// GET: api/Controller_Name/Show/1
[ActionName("Show")]
[HttpGet]
public EventPlanner Id(int id){}