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up vote 1 down vote favorite

How to create ASP.NET MVC4 json Web API which allows to search products by id, barcode, search term or retrieve all products since date ?

I tried to use ASP.NET MVC4 controller below.

Calling 

http://localhost:52216/admin/api/Products/GetSince?since=2014-03-16%2021:47:29&_=1395007124964

returns error

Multiple actions were found that match the request:

System.Net.Http.HttpResponseMessage GetSince(System.String) on type MyApp.Controllers.ProductsController\r\n


System.Net.Http.HttpResponseMessage GetId(System.String) on type MyApp.Controllers.ProductsController"

How to fix this ? This code looks ugly, it contains number of similar methods. Which is best way to create such API ? How to improve this code ? Http GET method should used but method names and signatures can changed.

ASP.NET/Mono MVC4, jquery, jquery UI are used. Windows 2003 server should also supported, so .NET 4.5 or MVC5 cannot used.

public class ProductsController : ApiController
{
    [HttpGet]
    public HttpResponseMessage GetSince([FromUri]string since))
    {
        var toodelist = GetProducts(since, null, null, null);
        return Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.OK,
           new { products = toodelist.ToArray() });
    }

    [HttpGet]
    public HttpResponseMessage GetId([FromUri]string id)
    {
        var toodelist = GetProducts(null, null, id, null);
        return Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.OK,
           new { products = toodelist.ToArray() });
    }


    [HttpGet]
    public HttpResponseMessage GetBarcode([FromUri]string barcode)
    {
        var toodelist = GetProducts(null, barcode, null, null);
        return Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.OK,
           new { products = toodelist.ToArray() });
    }

    [HttpGet]
    public HttpResponseMessage GetTerm([FromUri]string term)
    {
        var toodelist = GetProducts(null, null, null, term);
        return Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.OK,
           new { products = toodelist.ToArray() });
    }

    static List<Product> GetProducts(string since, string barcode, string id, string term)
    {
        ... retrieves list of product from database using specified search criteria
        if not null
    }
}
share|improve this question
    
Your immediate issue could be solved by adding a route the WebApiConfig for "api/{controller}/{action}/" but that does not improve the code. –  Andrew McLachlan Mar 17 '14 at 3:35

1 Answer 1

up vote 1 down vote accepted

How about using a search criteria DTO like this?

public class SearchCriteria
{
    public int? Id { get; set; }
    public DateTime? Since { get; set; }
    // Other properties
}

Action method will be like this.

public class ProductsController : ApiController
{
    public HttpResponseMessage GetProducts([FromUri]SearchCriteria crit))
    {
        // Validate and clean crit object
        var list = GetProducts(crit);
        // return list
    }
}

GetProducts can return the list of products based on the properties set in SearchCriteria object. If a query string field is not present, corresponding property will be null.

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