Catch-all route fails to find route with WebApi2 ApiController

Question

I am creating a WebApi2 service, and one of the methods I want to implement represents an HTTP GET from an object within an internal tree structure - so the request would be along the lines of:

GET /values/path/path/to/object/in/tree

So I would want my method to receive "path/to/object/in/tree".

However, I just get a 404 when I run this, and it's interesting that I get a 404 that is different looking to the standard IIS 404. It's titled 'Server Error in '/' Application.', whereas the one for a completely invalid resource is titled 'HTTP Error 404.0 - Not Found'.

I am playing around with the default template to try and see if I can get this to work, hence the similarity.

I have this for my RouteConfig

public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
{
    var route = routes.MapRoute(
               name: "CatchAllRoute",
                url: "values/path/{*pathValue}",
                defaults: new { controller = "Values", action = "GetPath" });
}

And this is my ValuesController:

[System.Web.Mvc.AuthorizeAttribute]
[RoutePrefix("values")]
public class ValuesController : ApiController
{
    [Route("test/{value}")]
    [HttpGet]
    public string Test(string value)
    {
        return value;
    }

    [HttpGet]
    public string GetPath(string pathValue)
    {
        return pathValue;
    }
}

Interestingly, if I derive from Controller rather than ApiController it works OK, but then the normal attribute routing doesn't work.

I tried following the methodology in this post (http://www.tugberkugurlu.com/archive/asp-net-web-api-catch-all-route-parameter-binding) but I couldn't get it to work.

I'm sure I'm missing something stupidly easy, but having spent a few hours on it I thought it prudent to ask what I'm doing wrong.

Thanks

M

Answer 1

Web api routing is not the same as routing MVC. instead of

route.MapRoute

try

public static void Register(HttpConfiguration config) {
    config.MapHttpAttributeRoutes

    config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
        name: "CatchAll", routeTemplate: "values/path/{*pathvalue}", 
        defaults: new {id = RouteParameter.Optional });
}

The reason it works from controller is that MapRoute is the correct format for routing an MVC controller, while MapHttpRoute is designed for API controllers.