Given the following webapiconfig;
config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
name: "DefaultApi",
routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{id}",
defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional }
);
and this controller;
public class ProductsController : ApiController
{
Product[] _products = new Product[]
{
new Product { Id = 1, Name = "Tomato Soup", Category = "Groceries", Price = 1 },
new Product { Id = 2, Name = "Yo-yo", Category = "Toys", Price = 3.75M },
new Product { Id = 3, Name = "Hammer", Category = "Hardware", Price = 16.99M }
};
public IEnumerable<Product> GetAllProducts()
{
return _products;
}
}
Using the URL http://localhost/api/Products
I get a list of products in XML format.
What I would like to do is have the option to return either json or xml based on the request. So for json, it would be;
http://localhost/api/Products.json
and for XML, it would be;
http://localhost/api/Products.xml
likewise;
http://localhost/api/Products.json/1/
http://localhost/api/Products.xml/1/
Is this possible and how would I achieve this functionality?
An alternative would be something like;
http://localhost/api/json/Products/
Yes you can achieve that with AddUriPathExtensionMapping
You can create routes like this:
routes.MapHttpRoute(
name: "Api UriPathExtension",
routeTemplate: "api/{controller}.{extension}/{id}",
defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional, extension = RouteParameter.Optional }
);
routes.MapHttpRoute(
name: "Api UriPathExtension ID",
routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{id}.{extension}",
defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional, extension = RouteParameter.Optional }
);
Then you need to extend the formatters:
config.Formatters.JsonFormatter.AddUriPathExtensionMapping("json", "application/json");
config.Formatters.XmlFormatter.AddUriPathExtensionMapping("xml", "text/xml");
MAke sure to add reference to System.Net.Http.Formatting
, as these methods are extension methods and intellisense won't see them by default.
Remember in this example, you still have to issue the request with the appropriate content-type. However, if you want to have these directly available via the browser address bar you can map to "text/html".
I wrote a blog post about all that a while ago - which should be helpful and take you into more details http://www.strathweb.com/2012/04/different-mediatypeformatters-for-same-mediaheadervalue-in-asp-net-web-api/