Microsoft recently released ASP.NET MVC 4.0 and .NET 4.5 and along with it,
the brand spanking new ASP.NET Web API. Web API is an exciting new addition to
the ASP.NET stack that provides a new, well-designed HTTP framework for creating REST and AJAX APIs (API is Microsoft’s new jargon for a service, in case you’re wondering). Although Web API ships and installs with ASP.NET MVC 4, you can use Web API functionality in any ASP.NET project, including WebForms, WebPages and MVC or just a Web API by itself. And you can also self-host Web API in your own applications from Console, Desktop or Service applications. If you're interested in a high level overview on what ASP.NET Web API is and how it fits into
the ASP.NET stack you can check out my previous post: Where does ASP.NET Web API fit? In
the following article, I'll focus on a practical, by example introduction to ASP.NET Web API. All
the code discussed in this article is available in GitHub: https://github.com/RickStrahl/AspNetWebApiArticle [republished from my Code Magazine Article and updated for RTM release of ASP.NET Web API]
Getting Started To start I’ll create a new empty ASP.NET application to demonstrate that Web API can work with any kind of ASP.NET project. Although you can create a new project based on
the ASP.NET MVC/Web API template to quickly get up and running, I’ll take you through
the manual setup process, because one common use case is to add Web API functionality to an existing ASP.NET application. This process describes
the steps needed to hook up Web API to any ASP.NET 4.0 application. Start by creating an ASP.NET Empty Project. Then create a new folder in
the project called Controllers. Add a Web API Controller Class Once you have any kind of ASP.NET project open, you can add a Web API Controller class to it. Web API Controllers are very similar to MVC Controller classes, but they work in any kind of project. Add a new item to this folder by using
the Add New Item option in Visual Studio and choose Web API Controller Class, as shown in Figure 1. Figure 1: This is how you create a new Controller Class in Visual Studio Make sure that
the name of
the controller class includes Controller at
the end of it, which is required in order for Web API routing to find it. Here,
the name for
the class is AlbumApiController. For this example, I’ll use a Music Album model to demonstrate basic behavior of Web API.
The model consists of albums and related songs where an album has properties like Name, Artist and YearReleased and a list of songs with a SongName and SongLength as well as an AlbumId that links it to
the album. You can find
the code for
the model (and
the rest of these samples) on Github. To add
the file manually, create a new folder called Model, and add a new class Album.cs and copy
the code into it. There’s a static AlbumData class with a static CreateSampleAlbumData() method that creates a short list of albums on a static .Current that I’ll use for
the examples. Before we look at what goes into
the controller class though, let’s hook up routing so we can access this new controller. Hooking up Routing in Global.asax To start, I need to perform
the one required configuration task in order for Web API to work: I need to configure routing to
the controller. Like MVC, Web API uses routing to provide clean, extension-less URLs to controller methods. Using an extension method to ASP.NET’s static RouteTable class, you can use
the MapHttpRoute() (in
the System.Web.Http namespace) method to hook-up
the routing during Application_Start in global.asax.cs shown in Listing 1.using System;
using System.Web.Routing;
using System.Web.Http;
namespace AspNetWebApi
{
public class Global : System.Web.HttpApplication
{
protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
RouteTable.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
name: "AlbumVerbs",
routeTemplate: "albums/{title}",
defaults: new { symbol = RouteParameter.Optional,
controller="AlbumApi" }
);
}
}
}
This route configures Web API to direct URLs that start with an albums folder to
the AlbumApiController class. Routing in ASP.NET is used to create extensionless URLs and allows you to map segments of
the URL to specific Route Value parameters. A route parameter, with a name inside curly brackets like {name}, is mapped to parameters on
the controller methods. Route parameters can be optional, and there are two special route parameters – controller and action – that determine
the controller to call and
the method to activate respectively.
HTTP Verb Routing
Routing in Web API can route requests by HTTP Verb in addition to standard {controller},{action} routing. For
the first examples, I use HTTP Verb routing, as shown Listing 1. Notice that
the route I’ve defined does not include an {action} route value or action value in
the defaults. Rather, Web API can use
the HTTP Verb in this route to determine
the method to call
the controller, and a GET request maps to any method that starts with Get. So methods called Get() or GetAlbums() are matched by a GET request and a POST request maps to a Post() or PostAlbum(). Web API matches a method by name and parameter signature to match a route, query string or POST values. In lieu of
the method name,
the [HttpGet,HttpPost,HttpPut,HttpDelete, etc] attributes can also be used to designate
the accepted verbs explicitly if you don’t want to follow
the verb naming conventions.
Although HTTP Verb routing is a good practice for REST style resource APIs, it’s not required and you can still use more traditional routes with an explicit {action} route parameter. When {action} is supplied,
the HTTP verb routing is ignored. I’ll talk more about alternate routes later.
When you’re finished with initial creation of files, your project should look like Figure 2.
Figure 2:
The initial project has
the new API Controller Album model
Creating a small Album Model
Now it’s time to create some controller methods to serve data. For these examples, I’ll use a very simple Album and Songs model to play with, as shown in Listing 2. public class Song
{
public string AlbumId { get; set; }
[Required, StringLength(80)]
public string SongName { get; set; }
[StringLength(5)]
public string SongLength { get; set; }
}
public class Album
{
public string Id { get; set; }
[Required, StringLength(80)]
public string AlbumName { get; set; }
[StringLength(80)]
public string Artist { get; set; }
public int YearReleased { get; set; }
public DateTime Entered { get; set; }
[StringLength(150)]
public string AlbumImageUrl { get; set; }
[StringLength(200)]
public string AmazonUrl { get; set; }
public virtual List<Song> Songs { get; set; }
public Album()
{
Songs = new List<Song>();
Entered = DateTime.Now;
// Poor man's unique Id off GUID hash
Id = Guid.NewGuid().GetHashCode().ToString("x");
}
public void AddSong(string songName, string songLength = null)
{
this.Songs.Add(new Song()
{
AlbumId = this.Id,
SongName = songName,
SongLength = songLength
});
}
}
Once
the model has been created, I also added an AlbumData class that generates some static data in memory that is loaded onto a static .Current member.
The signature of this class looks like this and that's what I'll access to retrieve
the base data:public static class AlbumData
{
// sample data - static list
public static List<Album> Current = CreateSampleAlbumData();
/// <summary>
/// Create some sample data
/// </summary>
/// <returns></returns>
public static List<Album> CreateSampleAlbumData() { … }}
You can check out
the full code for
the data generation online.
Creating an AlbumApiController
Web API shares many concepts of ASP.NET MVC, and
the implementation of your API logic is done by implementing a subclass of
the System.Web.Http.ApiController class. Each public method in
the implemented controller is a potential endpoint for
the HTTP API, as long as a matching route can be found to invoke it.
The class name you create should end in Controller, which is how Web API matches
the controller route value to figure out which class to invoke.
Inside
the controller you can implement methods that take standard .NET input parameters and return .NET values as results. Web API’s binding tries to match POST data, route values, form values or query string values to your parameters. Because
the controller is configured for HTTP Verb based routing (no {action} parameter in
the route), any methods that start with Getxxxx() are called by an HTTP GET operation. You can have multiple methods that match each HTTP Verb as long as
the parameter signatures are different and can be matched by Web API.
In Listing 3, I create an AlbumApiController with two methods to retrieve a list of albums and a single album by its title .public class AlbumApiController : ApiController
{
public IEnumerable<Album> GetAlbums()
{
var albums = AlbumData.Current.OrderBy(alb => alb.Artist);
return albums;
}
public Album GetAlbum(string title)
{
var album = AlbumData.Current
.SingleOrDefault(alb => alb.AlbumName.Contains(title));
return album;
}}
To access
the first two requests, you can use
the following URLs in your browser:
http://localhost/aspnetWebApi/albumshttp://localhost/aspnetWebApi/albums/Dirty%20Deeds
Note that you’re not specifying
the actions of GetAlbum or GetAlbums in these URLs. Instead Web API’s routing uses HTTP GET verb to route to these methods that start with Getxxx() with
the first mapping to
the parameterless GetAlbums() method and
the latter to
the GetAlbum(title) method that receives
the title parameter mapped as optional in
the route.
Content Negotiation
When you access any of
the URLs above from a browser, you get either an XML or JSON result returned back.
The album list result for Chrome 17 and Internet Explorer 9 is shown Figure 3.
Figure 3: Web API responses can vary depending on
the browser used, demonstrating Content Negotiation in action as these two browsers send different HTTP Accept headers.
Notice that
the results are not
the same: Chrome returns an XML response and IE9 returns a JSON response. Whoa, what’s going on here? Shouldn’t we see
the same result in both browsers?
Actually, no. Web API determines what type of content to return based on Accept headers. HTTP clients, like browsers, use Accept headers to specify what kind of content they’d like to see returned. Browsers generally ask for HTML first, followed by a few additional content types. Chrome (and most other major browsers) ask for:
Accept: text/html,
application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;
q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
IE9 asks for:
Accept: text/html, application/xhtml+xml, */*
Note that Chrome’s Accept header includes application/xml, which Web API finds in its list of supported media types and returns an XML response. IE9 does not include an Accept header type that works on Web API by default, and so it returns
the default format, which is JSON.
This is an important and very useful feature that was missing from any previous Microsoft REST tools: Web API automatically switches output formats based on HTTP Accept headers. Nowhere in
the server code above do you have to explicitly specify
the output format. Rather, Web API determines what format
the client is requesting based on
the Accept headers and automatically returns
the result based on
the available formatters. This means that a single method can handle both XML and JSON results..
Using this simple approach makes it very easy to create a single controller method that can return JSON, XML, ATOM or even OData feeds by providing
the appropriate Accept header from
the client. By default you don’t have to worry about
the output format in your code.
Note that you can still specify an explicit output format if you choose, either globally by overriding
the installed formatters, or individually by returning a lower level HttpResponseMessage instance and setting
the formatter explicitly. More on that in a minute.
Along
the same lines, any content sent to
the server via POST/PUT is parsed by Web API based on
the HTTP Content-type of
the data sent.
The same formats allowed for output are also allowed on input. Again, you don’t have to do anything in your code – Web API automatically performs
the deserialization from
the content.
Accessing Web API JSON Data with jQuery
A very common scenario for Web API endpoints is to retrieve data for AJAX calls from
the Web browser. Because JSON is
the default format for Web API, it’s easy to access data from
the server using jQuery and its getJSON() method. This example receives
the albums array from GetAlbums() and databinds it into
the page using knockout.js.$.getJSON("albums/", function (albums) {
// make knockout template visible
$(".album").show();
// create view object and attach array
var view = { albums: albums };
ko.applyBindings(view);
});
Figure 4 shows this and
the next example’s HTML output. You can check out
the complete HTML and script code at http://goo.gl/Ix33C (.html) and http://goo.gl/tETlg (.js).
Figu
Figure 4:
The Album Display sample uses JSON data loaded from Web API.
The result from
the getJSON() call is a JavaScript object of
the server result, which comes back as a JavaScript array. In
the code, I use knockout.js to bind this array into
the UI, which as you can see, requires very little code, instead using knockout’s data-bind attributes to bind server data to
the UI. Of course, this is just one way to use
the data – it’s entirely up to you to decide what to do with
the data in your client code.
Along
the same lines, I can retrieve a single album to display when
the user clicks on an album.
The response returns
the album information and a child array with all
the songs.
The code to do this is very similar to
the last example where we pulled
the albums array:$(".albumlink").live("click", function () {
var id = $(this).data("id"); // title
$.getJSON("albums/" + id, function (album) {
ko.applyBindings(album,
$("#divAlbumDialog")[0]);
$("#divAlbumDialog").show();
});
});
Here
the URL looks like this: /albums/Dirty%20Deeds, where
the title is
the ID captured from
the clicked element’s data ID attribute.
Explicitly Overriding Output Format
When Web API automatically converts output using content negotiation, it does so by matching Accept header media types to
the GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.Formatters and
the SupportedMediaTypes of each individual formatter. You can add and remove formatters to globally affect what formats are available and it’s easy to create and plug in custom formatters.
The example project includes a JSONP formatter that can be plugged in to provide JSONP support for requests that have a callback= querystring parameter. Adding, removing or replacing formatters is a global option you can use to manipulate content. It’s beyond
the scope of this introduction to show how it works, but you can review
the sample code or check out my blog entry on
the subject (http://goo.gl/UAzaR).
If automatic processing is not desirable in a particular Controller method, you can override
the response output explicitly by returning an HttpResponseMessage instance. HttpResponseMessage is similar to ActionResult in ASP.NET MVC in that it’s a common way to return an abstract result message that contains content. HttpResponseMessage s parsed by
the Web API framework using standard interfaces to retrieve
the response data, status code, headers and so on[MS2] . Web API turns every response – including those Controller methods that return static results – into HttpResponseMessage instances. Explicitly returning an HttpResponseMessage instance gives you full control over
the output and lets you mostly bypass WebAPI’s post-processing of
the HTTP response on your behalf.
HttpResponseMessage allows you to customize
the response in great detail. Web API’s attention to detail in
the HTTP spec really shows; many HTTP options are exposed as properties and enumerations with detailed IntelliSense comments. Even if you’re new to building REST-based interfaces,
the API guides you in
the right direction for returning valid responses and response codes.
For example, assume that I always want to return JSON from
the GetAlbums() controller method and ignore
the default media type content negotiation. To do this, I can adjust
the output format and headers as shown in Listing 4.public HttpResponseMessage GetAlbums()
{
var albums = AlbumData.Current.OrderBy(alb => alb.Artist);
// Create a new HttpResponse with Json Formatter explicitly
var resp = new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.OK);
resp.Content = new ObjectContent<IEnumerable<Album>>(
albums, new JsonMediaTypeFormatter());
// Get Default Formatter based on Content Negotiation
//var resp = Request.CreateResponse<IEnumerable<Album>>(HttpStatusCode.OK, albums);
resp.Headers.ConnectionClose = true;
resp.Headers.CacheControl = new CacheControlHeaderValue();
resp.Headers.CacheControl.Public = true;
return resp;
}
This example returns
the same IEnumerable<Album> value, but it wraps
the response into an HttpResponseMessage so you can control
the entire HTTP message result including
the headers, formatter and status code. In Listing 4, I explicitly specify
the formatter using
the JsonMediaTypeFormatter to always force
the content to JSON.
If you prefer to use
the default content negotiation with HttpResponseMessage results, you can create
the Response instance using
the Request.CreateResponse method:var resp = Request.CreateResponse<IEnumerable<Album>>(HttpStatusCode.OK, albums);
This provides you an HttpResponse object that's pre-configured with
the default formatter based on Content Negotiation.
Once you have an HttpResponse object you can easily control most HTTP aspects on this object. What's sweet here is that there are many more detailed properties on HttpResponse than
the core ASP.NET Response object, with most options being explicitly configurable with enumerations that make it easy to pick
the right headers and response codes from a list of valid codes. It makes HTTP features available much more discoverable even for non-hardcore REST/HTTP geeks.
Non-Serialized Results
The output returned doesn’t have to be a serialized value but can also be raw data, like strings, binary data or streams. You can use
the HttpResponseMessage.Content object to set a number of common Content classes. Listing 5 shows how to return a binary image using
the ByteArrayContent class from a Controller method. [HttpGet]
public HttpResponseMessage AlbumArt(string title)
{
var album = AlbumData.Current.FirstOrDefault(abl => abl.AlbumName.StartsWith(title));
if (album == null)
{
var resp = Request.CreateResponse<ApiMessageError>(
HttpStatusCode.NotFound,
new ApiMessageError("Album not found"));
return resp;
}
// kinda silly - we would normally serve this directly
// but hey - it's a demo.
var http = new WebClient();
var imageData = http.DownloadData(album.AlbumImageUrl);
// create response and return
var result = new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.OK);
result.Content = new ByteArrayContent(imageData);
result.Content.Headers.ContentType = new MediaTypeHeaderValue("image/jpeg");
return result;
}
The image retrieval from Amazon is contrived, but it shows how to return binary data using ByteArrayContent. It also demonstrates that you can easily return multiple types of content from a single controller method, which is actually quite common. If an error occurs - such as a resource can’t be found or a validation error – you can return an error response to
the client that’s very specific to
the error. In GetAlbumArt(), if
the album can’t be found, we want to return a 404 Not Found status (and realistically no error, as it’s an image).
Note that if you are not using HTTP Verb-based routing or not accessing a method that starts with Get/Post etc., you have to specify one or more HTTP Verb attributes on
the method explicitly. Here, I used
the [HttpGet] attribute to serve
the image. Another option to handle
the error could be to return a fixed placeholder image if no album could be matched or
the album doesn’t have an image.
When returning an error code, you can also return a strongly typed response to
the client. For example, you can set
the 404 status code and also return a custom error object (ApiMessageError is a class I defined) like this:return Request.CreateResponse<ApiMessageError>(
HttpStatusCode.NotFound,
new ApiMessageError("Album not found")
);
If
the album can be found,
the image will be returned.
The image is downloaded into a byte[] array, and then assigned to
the result’s Content property. I created a new ByteArrayContent instance and assigned
the image’s bytes and
the content type so that it displays properly in
the browser.
There are other content classes available: StringContent, StreamContent, ByteArrayContent, MultipartContent, and ObjectContent are at your disposal to return just about any kind of content. You can create your own Content classes if you frequently return custom types and handle
the default formatter assignments that should be used to send
the data out .
Although HttpResponseMessage results require more code than returning a plain .NET value from a method, it allows much more control over
the actual HTTP processing than automatic processing. It also makes it much easier to test your controller methods as you get a response object that you can check for specific status codes and output messages rather than just a result value.
Routing Again
Ok, let’s get back to
the image example. Using
the original routing we have setup using HTTP Verb routing there's no good way to serve
the image. In order to return my album art image I’d like to use a URL like this:
http://localhost/aspnetWebApi/albums/Dirty%20Deeds/image
In order to create a URL like this, I have to create a new Controller because my earlier routes pointed to
the AlbumApiController using HTTP Verb routing. HTTP Verb based routing is great for representing a single set of resources such as albums. You can map operations like add, delete, update and read easily using HTTP Verbs. But you cannot mix action based routing into a an HTTP Verb routing controller - you can only map HTTP Verbs and each method has to be unique based on parameter signature. You can't have multiple GET operations to methods with
the same signature. So GetImage(string id) and GetAlbum(string title) are in conflict in an HTTP GET routing scenario.
In fact, I was unable to make
the above Image URL work with any combination of HTTP Verb plus Custom routing using
the single Albums controller.
There are number of ways around this, but all involve additional controllers. Personally, I think it’s easier to use explicit Action routing and then add custom routes if you need to simplify your URLs further. So in order to accommodate some of
the other examples, I created another controller – AlbumRpcApiController – to handle all requests that are explicitly routed via actions (/albums/rpc/AlbumArt) or are custom routed with explicit routes defined in
the HttpConfiguration. I added
the AlbumArt() method to this new AlbumRpcApiController class.
For
the image URL to work with
the new AlbumRpcApiController, you need a custom route placed before
the default route from Listing 1.RouteTable.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
name: "AlbumRpcApiAction",
routeTemplate: "albums/rpc/{action}/{title}",
defaults: new
{
title = RouteParameter.Optional,
controller = "AlbumRpcApi",
action = "GetAblums"
}
);
Now I can use either of
the following URLs to access
the image:
Custom route: (/albums/rpc/{title}/image)http://localhost/aspnetWebApi/albums/PowerAge/image
Action route: (/albums/rpc/action/{title})http://localhost/aspnetWebAPI/albums/rpc/albumart/PowerAge
Sending Data to
the Server
To send data to
the server and add a new album, you can use an HTTP POST operation. Since I’m using HTTP Verb-based routing in
the original AlbumApiController, I can implement a method called PostAlbum()to accept a new album from
the client. Listing 6 shows
the Web API code to add a new album.public HttpResponseMessage PostAlbum(Album album)
{
if (!this.ModelState.IsValid)
{
// my custom error class
var error = new ApiMessageError() { message = "Model is invalid" };
// add errors into our client error model for client
foreach (var prop in ModelState.Values)
{
var modelError = prop.Errors.FirstOrDefault();
if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(modelError.ErrorMessage))
error.errors.Add(modelError.ErrorMessage);
else
error.errors.Add(modelError.Exception.Message);
}
return Request.CreateResponse<ApiMessageError>(HttpStatusCode.Conflict, error);
}
// update song id which isn't provided
foreach (var song in album.Songs)
song.AlbumId = album.Id;
// see if album exists already
var matchedAlbum = AlbumData.Current
.SingleOrDefault(alb => alb.Id == album.Id ||
alb.AlbumName == album.AlbumName);
if (matchedAlbum == null)
AlbumData.Current.Add(album);
else
matchedAlbum = album;
// return a string to show that
the value got here
var resp = Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.OK, string.Empty);
resp.Content = new StringContent(album.AlbumName + " " + album.Entered.ToString(),
Encoding.UTF8, "text/plain");
return resp;
}
The PostAlbum() method receives an album parameter, which is automatically deserialized from
the POST buffer
the client sent.
The data passed from
the client can be either XML or JSON. Web API automatically figures out what format it needs to deserialize based on
the content type and binds
the content to
the album object. Web API uses model binding to bind
the request content to
the parameter(s) of controller methods.
Like MVC you can check
the model by looking at ModelState.IsValid. If it’s not valid, you can run through
the ModelState.Values collection and check each binding for errors. Here I collect
the error messages into a string array that gets passed back to
the client via
the result ApiErrorMessage object.
When a binding error occurs, you’ll want to return an HTTP error response and it’s best to do that with an HttpResponseMessage result. In Listing 6, I used a custom error class that holds a message and an array of detailed error messages for each binding error. I used this object as
the content to return to
the client along with my Conflict HTTP Status Code response.
If binding succeeds,
the example returns a string with
the name and date entered to demonstrate that you captured
the data. Normally, a method like this should return a Boolean or no response at all (HttpStatusCode.NoConent).
The sample uses a simple static list to hold albums, so once you’ve added
the album using
the Post operation, you can hit
the /albums/ URL to see that
the new album was added.
The client jQuery code to call
the POST operation from
the client with jQuery is shown in Listing 7. var id = new Date().getTime().toString();
var album = {
"Id": id,
"AlbumName": "Power Age",
"Artist": "AC/DC",
"YearReleased": 1977,
"Entered": "2002-03-11T18:24:43.5580794-10:00",
"AlbumImageUrl": http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/…,
"AmazonUrl": http://www.amazon.com/…,
"Songs": [
{ "SongName": "Rock 'n Roll Damnation", "SongLength": 3.12},
{ "SongName": "Downpayment Blues", "SongLength": 4.22 },
{ "SongName": "Riff Raff", "SongLength": 2.42 }
]
}
$.ajax(
{
url: "albums/",
type: "POST",
contentType: "application/json",
data: JSON.stringify(album),
processData: false,
beforeSend: function (xhr) {
// not required since JSON is default output
xhr.setRequestHeader("Accept", "application/json");
},
success: function (result) {
// reload list of albums
page.loadAlbums();
},
error: function (xhr, status, p3, p4) {
var err = "Error";
if (xhr.responseText && xhr.responseText[0] == "{")
err = JSON.parse(xhr.responseText).message;
alert(err);
}
});
The code in Listing 7 creates an album object in JavaScript to match
the structure of
the .NET Album class. This object is passed to
the $.ajax() function to send to
the server as POST.
The data is turned into JSON and
the content type set to application/json so that
the server knows what to convert when deserializing in
the Album instance.
The jQuery code hooks up success and failure events. Success returns
the result data, which is a string that’s echoed back with an alert box. If an error occurs, jQuery returns
the XHR instance and status code. You can check
the XHR to see if a JSON object is embedded and if it is, you can extract it by de-serializing it and accessing
the .message property.
REST standards suggest that updates to existing resources should use PUT operations. REST standards aside, I’m not a big fan of separating out inserts and updates so I tend to have a single method that handles both.
But if you want to follow REST suggestions, you can create a PUT method that handles updates by forwarding
the PUT operation to
the POST method:public HttpResponseMessage PutAlbum(Album album)
{
return PostAlbum(album);
}
To make
the corresponding $.ajax() call, all you have to change from Listing 7 is
the type: from POST to PUT.
Model Binding with UrlEncoded POST Variables
In
the example in Listing 7 I used JSON objects to post a serialized object to a server method that accepted an strongly typed object with
the same structure, which is a common way to send data to
the server. However, Web API supports a number of different ways that data can be received by server methods.
For example, another common way is to use plain UrlEncoded POST values to send to
the server. Web API supports Model Binding that works similar (but not
the same) as MVC's model binding where POST variables are mapped to properties of object parameters of
the target method. This is actually quite common for AJAX calls that want to avoid serialization and
the potential requirement of a JSON parser on older browsers.
For example, using jQUery you might use
the $.post() method to send a new album to
the server (albeit one without songs) using code like
the following:$.post("albums/",{AlbumName: "Dirty Deeds", YearReleased: 1976 … },albumPostCallback);
Although
the code looks very similar to
the client code we used before passing JSON, here
the data passed is URL encoded values (AlbumName=Dirty+Deeds&YearReleased=1976 etc.). Web API then takes this POST data and maps each of
the POST values to
the properties of
the Album object in
the method's parameter. Although
the client code is different
the server can both handle
the JSON object, or
the UrlEncoded POST values.
Dynamic Access to POST Data
There are also a few options available to dynamically access POST data, if you know what type of data you're dealing with.
If you have POST UrlEncoded values, you can dynamically using a FormsDataCollection:[HttpPost]
public string PostAlbum(FormDataCollection form)
{
return string.Format("{0} - released {1}",
form.Get("AlbumName"),form.Get("RearReleased"));
}
The FormDataCollection is a very simple object, that essentially provides
the same functionality as Request.Form[] in ASP.NET. Request.Form[] still works if you're running hosted in an ASP.NET application. However as a general rule, while ASP.NET's functionality is always available when running Web API hosted inside of an ASP.NET application, using
the built in classes specific to Web API makes it possible to run Web API applications in a self hosted environment outside of ASP.NET.
If your client is sending JSON to your server, and you don't want to map
the JSON to a strongly typed object because you only want to retrieve a few simple values, you can also accept a JObject parameter in your API methods:[HttpPost]
public string PostAlbum(JObject jsonData)
{
dynamic json = jsonData;
JObject jalbum = json.Album;
JObject juser = json.User;
string token = json.UserToken;
var album = jalbum.ToObject<Album>();
var user = juser.ToObject<User>();
return String.Format("{0} {1} {2}", album.AlbumName, user.Name, token);
}
There quite a few options available to you to receive data with Web API, which gives you more choices for
the right tool for
the job.
Unfortunately one shortcoming of Web API is that POST data is always mapped to a single parameter. This means you can't pass multiple POST parameters to methods that receive POST data. It's possible to accept multiple parameters, but only one can map to
the POST content -
the others have to come from
the query string or route values.
I have a couple of Blog POSTs that explain what works and what doesn't here:
Passing multiple POST parameters to Web API Controller Methods
Mapping UrlEncoded POST Values in ASP.NET Web API
Handling Delete Operations
Finally, to round out
the server API code of
the album example we've been discussin, here’s
the DELETE verb controller method that allows removal of an album by its title:public HttpResponseMessage DeleteAlbum(string title)
{
var matchedAlbum = AlbumData.Current.Where(alb => alb.AlbumName == title)
.SingleOrDefault();
if (matchedAlbum == null)
return new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.NotFound);
AlbumData.Current.Remove(matchedAlbum);
return new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.NoContent);
}
To call this action method using jQuery, you can use:$(".removeimage").live("click", function () {
var $el = $(this).parent(".album");
var txt = $el.find("a").text();
$.ajax({
url: "albums/" + encodeURIComponent(txt),
type: "Delete",
success: function (result) {
$el.fadeOut().remove();
},
error: jqError
});
}
Note
the use of
the DELETE verb in
the $.ajax() call, which routes to DeleteAlbum on
the server. DELETE is a non-content operation, so you supply a resource ID (the title) via route value or
the querystring.
Routing Conflicts
In all requests with
the exception of
the AlbumArt image example shown so far, I used HTTP Verb routing that I set up in Listing 1. HTTP Verb Routing is a recommendation that is in line with typical REST access to HTTP resources. However, it takes quite a bit of effort to create REST-compliant API implementations based only on HTTP Verb routing only. You saw one example that didn’t really fit –
the return of an image where I created a custom route albums/{title}/image that required creation of a second controller and a custom route to work. HTTP Verb routing to a controller does not mix with custom or action routing to
the same controller because of
the limited mapping of HTTP verbs imposed by HTTP Verb routing.
To understand some of
the problems with verb routing, let’s look at another example. Let’s say you create a GetSortableAlbums() method like this and add it to
the original AlbumApiController accessed via HTTP Verb routing:[HttpGet]
public IQueryable<Album> SortableAlbums()
{
var albums = AlbumData.Current;
// generally should be done only on actual queryable results (EF etc.)
// Done here because we're running with a static list but otherwise might be slow
return albums.AsQueryable();
}
If you compile this code and try to now access
the /albums/ link, you get an error: Multiple Actions were found that match
the request.
HTTP Verb routing only allows access to one GET operation per parameter/route value match. If more than one method exists with
the same parameter signature, it doesn’t work. As I mentioned earlier for
the image display,
the only solution to get this method to work is to throw it into another controller. Because I already set up
the AlbumRpcApiController I can add
the method there.
First, I should rename
the method to SortableAlbums() so I’m not using a Get prefix for
the method. This also makes
the action parameter look cleaner in
the URL - it looks less like a method and more like a noun.
I can then create a new route that handles direct-action mapping:RouteTable.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
name: "AlbumRpcApiAction",
routeTemplate: "albums/rpc/{action}/{title}",
defaults: new
{
title = RouteParameter.Optional,
controller = "AlbumRpcApi",
action = "GetAblums"
}
);
As I am explicitly adding a route segment – rpc – into
the route template, I can now reference explicit methods in
the Web API controller using URLs like this:
http://localhost/AspNetWebApi/rpc/SortableAlbums
Error Handling
I’ve already done some minimal error handling in
the examples. For example in Listing 6, I detected some known-error scenarios like model validation failing or a resource not being found and returning an appropriate HttpResponseMessage result. But what happens if your code just blows up or causes an exception?
If you have a controller method, like this:[HttpGet]
public void ThrowException()
{
throw new UnauthorizedAccessException("Unauthorized Access Sucka");
}
You can call it with this:
http://localhost/AspNetWebApi/albums/rpc/ThrowException
The default exception handling displays a 500-status response with
the serialized exception on
the local computer only. When you connect from a remote computer, Web API throws back a 500 HTTP Error with no data returned (IIS then adds its HTML error page).
The behavior is configurable in
the GlobalConfiguration:GlobalConfiguration
.Configuration
.IncludeErrorDetailPolicy = IncludeErrorDetailPolicy.Never;
If you want more control over your error responses sent from code, you can throw explicit error responses yourself using HttpResponseException. When you throw an HttpResponseException
the response parameter is used to generate
the output for
the Controller action. [HttpGet]
public void ThrowError()
{
var resp = Request.CreateResponse<ApiMessageError>(
HttpStatusCode.BadRequest,
new ApiMessageError("Your code stinks!"));
throw new HttpResponseException(resp);
}
Throwing an HttpResponseException stops
the processing of
the controller method and immediately returns
the response you passed to
the exception. Unlike other Exceptions fired inside of WebAPI, HttpResponseException bypasses
the Exception Filters installed and instead just outputs
the response you provide.
In this case,
the serialized ApiMessageError result string is returned in
the default serialization format – XML or JSON. You can pass any content to HttpResponseMessage, which includes creating your own exception objects and consistently returning error messages to
the client. Here’s a small helper method on
the controller that you might use to send exception info back to
the client consistently:private void ThrowSafeException(string message,
HttpStatusCode statusCode = HttpStatusCode.BadRequest)
{
var errResponse = Request.CreateResponse<ApiMessageError>(statusCode,
new ApiMessageError() { message = message });
throw new HttpResponseException(errResponse);
}
You can then use it to output any captured errors from code:[HttpGet]
public void ThrowErrorSafe()
{
try
{
List<string> list = null;
list.Add("Rick");
}
catch (Exception ex)
{ ThrowSafeException(ex.Message); }
}
Exception Filters
Another more global solution is to create an Exception Filter. Filters in Web API provide
the ability to pre- and post-process controller method operations. An exception filter looks at all exceptions fired and then optionally creates an HttpResponseMessage result. Listing 8 shows an example of a basic Exception filter implementation.public class UnhandledExceptionFilter : ExceptionFilterAttribute
{
public override void OnException(HttpActionExecutedContext context)
{
HttpStatusCode status = HttpStatusCode.InternalServerError;
var exType = context.Exception.GetType();
if (exType == typeof(UnauthorizedAccessException))
status = HttpStatusCode.Unauthorized;
else if (exType == typeof(ArgumentException))
status = HttpStatusCode.NotFound;
var apiError = new ApiMessageError() { message = context.Exception.Message };
// create a new response and attach our ApiError object
// which now gets returned on ANY exception result
var errorResponse = context.Request.CreateResponse<ApiMessageError>(status, apiError);
context.Response = errorResponse;
base.OnException(context);
}
}
Exception Filter Attributes can be assigned to an ApiController class like this:[UnhandledExceptionFilter]
public class AlbumRpcApiController : ApiController
or you can globally assign it to all controllers by adding it to
the HTTP Configuration's Filters collection:GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.Filters.Add(new UnhandledExceptionFilter());
The latter is a great way to get global error trapping so that all errors (short of hard IIS errors and explicit HttpResponseException errors) return a valid error response that includes error information in
the form of a known-error object. Using a filter like this allows you to throw an exception as you normally would and have your filter create a response in
the appropriate output format that
the client expects. For example, an AJAX application can on failure expect to see a JSON error result that corresponds to
the real error that occurred rather than a 500 error along with HTML error page that IIS throws up.
You can even create some custom exceptions so you can differentiate your own exceptions from unhandled system exceptions - you often don't want to display error information from 'unknown' exceptions as they may contain sensitive system information or info that's not generally useful to users of your application/site.
This is just one example of how ASP.NET Web API is configurable and extensible. Exception filters are just one example of how you can plug-in into
the Web API request flow to modify output. Many more hooks exist and I’ll take a closer look at extensibility in Part 2 of this article in
the future.
Summary
Web API is a big improvement over previous Microsoft REST and AJAX toolkits.
The key features to its usefulness are its ease of use with simple controller based logic, familiar MVC-style routing, low configuration impact, extensibility at all levels and tight attention to exposing and making HTTP semantics easily discoverable and easy to use. Although none of
the concepts used in Web API are new or radical, Web API combines
the best of previous platforms into a single framework that’s highly functional, easy to work with, and extensible to boot. I think that Microsoft has hit a home run with Web API.
Related Resources
Where does ASP.NET Web API fit?
Sample Source Code on GitHub
Passing multiple POST parameters to Web API Controller Methods
Mapping UrlEncoded POST Values in ASP.NET Web API
Creating a JSONP Formatter for ASP.NET Web API
Removing
the XML Formatter from ASP.NET Web API Applications© Rick Strahl, West
Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Web Api
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