oData v4 what are Functions and Actions in simple terms?

.net asp.net-web-api asp.net-web-api2 odata odata-v4
user576510 picture user576510 · Jun 29, 2016 · Viewed 7.9k times · Source

In oData 4.0 Actions and functions are frequently referred. I couldn't get what are they and how they are different. Are function same functions we have in any programming language or something else ? What are Actions ? and how both are different. Thanks for your help.

Answer

Vinit picture Vinit · Jun 29, 2016

Actions - Can be used to perform CRUD operations on an entity. That means , you can create,update,delete the entity using custom actions if default actions (POST/PUT/DELETE) doesn't support your requirements. Also you can use the custom actions to fetch the data from multiple entities for complex types. Actions are similar to Stored procedures in SQL which allows SELECT as well as DML queries.

Functions - Ideally, you should use functions to get data only and not for data modifications. These are similar to functions in SQL which allows SELECT queries only.

Related questions

Web API 2: how to return JSON with camelCased property names, on objects and their sub-objects

UPDATE Thanks for all the answers. I am on a new project and it looks like I've finally got to the bottom of this: It looks like the following code was in fact to blame: public static HttpResponseMessage GetHttpSuccessResponse(object …

Read More
Apply [Authorize] attribute implicitly to all Web API controllers

My application is setup where all requests except login must be 'authorized' using the authorization attribute in Web API. E.g. [Authorize] [HttpGet, Route("api/account/profile")] public ApplicationUser Profile() { return userModel; } and only the login needs to not authorize …

Read More
The route template separator character '/' cannot appear consecutively - Attribute routing issue

The configuration has nothing to do with the error This is my configuration for the Web API in App_Start/WebApiConfig.cs: public static void Register(HttpConfiguration config) { // Web API routes config.MapHttpAttributeRoutes(); config.Routes.MapHttpRoute( name: "DefaultApi", routeTemplate: "api/{…

Read More