Read HttpContent in WebApi controller

Question

How can I read the contents on the PUT request in MVC webApi controller action.

[HttpPut]
public HttpResponseMessage Put(int accountId, Contact contact)
{
    var httpContent = Request.Content;
    var asyncContent = httpContent.ReadAsStringAsync().Result;
...

I get empty string here :(

What I need to do is: figure out "what properties" were modified/sent in the initial request (meaning that if the Contact object has 10 properties, and I want to update only 2 of them, I send and object with only two properties, something like this:

{

    "FirstName": null,
    "LastName": null,
    "id": 21
}

The expected end result is

List<string> modified_properties = {"FirstName", "LastName"}

Answer 1

By design the body content in ASP.NET Web API is treated as forward-only stream that can be read only once.

The first read in your case is being done when Web API is binding your model, after that the Request.Content will not return anything.

You can remove the contact from your action parameters, get the content and deserialize it manually into object (for example with Json.NET):

[HttpPut]
public HttpResponseMessage Put(int accountId)
{
    HttpContent requestContent = Request.Content;
    string jsonContent = requestContent.ReadAsStringAsync().Result;
    CONTACT contact = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<CONTACT>(jsonContent);
    ...
}

That should do the trick (assuming that accountId is URL parameter so it will not be treated as content read).