Two GET in MVC C# - asp.net-web-api

Question

public class EmployeesController : ApiController
{
public IEnumerable<Employee> GetAllEmployees()
{
return (new EmployeeData()).GetEmployeeRecords();
}
public Employee GetSingleEmployee(int id)
{
return (new EmployeeData()).GetSingleEmployeeRecord(id);
}
public void Delete(int id)
{
(new EmployeeData()).DeleteEmployeeRecord(id);
}
}
This is what I have now. I'm trying to make the app call the first function with a get call api/employee and the second one with a get call api/employee/(an ID number) eg api/employee/75. The get call always goes to the first one. How do I solve this?
This is my routing:
namespace EmployeeApp
{
public class RouteConfig
{
public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
{
routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");
routes.MapRoute(
name: "Default",
url: "{controller}/{action}/{id}",
defaults: new { action = "Index", id=UrlParameter.Optional }
);
}
}
}

Answer 1

After a brief discussion in chat, we discovered that the issue here is that you have two different route configuration files, one for MVC and one for WebAPI. While you could change the name of your actions to match the convention of the WebAPI route configuration (i.e. change GetSingleEmployee to GetEmployeeById), there is another way which would allow you to keep the actions named the same, and have more control over your desired routes. My recommendation is to use the newer Attribute Routing syntax.
First, change your configuration class like so:
public static void Register(HttpConfiguration config)
{
// Web API routes
config.MapHttpAttributeRoutes();
// Other Web API configuration not shown.
}
next, change your class signature to define the routes through attributes:
[RoutePrefix("api/employee")]
public class EmployeesController : ApiController
{
// http://example.com/api/employee/
[Route("")]
public IEnumerable<Employee> GetAllEmployees()
{
return (new EmployeeData()).GetEmployeeRecords();
}
// http://example.com/api/employee/75
[Route("{id:int}"]
public Employee GetSingleEmployee(int id)
{
return (new EmployeeData()).GetSingleEmployeeRecord(id);
}
// http://example.com/api/employee/Delete/75
[Route("Delete/{id:int}")]
public void Delete(int id)
{
(new EmployeeData()).DeleteEmployeeRecord(id);
}
}
This controller now clearly shows it's routes, rather than the routes being defined somewhere else, or being defined by an obscure name matching convention.