Route parameter with slash "/" in URL

bet picture bet · Jun 22, 2015 · Viewed 44.4k times · Source

I know you can apply a wildcard in the route attribute to allow / such as date input for example:

[Route("orders/{*orderdate}")]

The problem with wildcard is only applicable to the last paramter in URI. How do I solve the issue if want to have the following URI:

[Route("orders/{orderdate}/customers")]

Update:

I know there are few options to solve the issue by refactoring the code so please do not offer a solution something like:

  1. change the route template to [Route("orders/customers/{orderdate}")]
  2. change the date to a different format (e.g. "dd-mm-yyyy")

Answer

ronnie picture ronnie · Jun 23, 2015

@bet.. I think the genericUriParserOptions is no longer applicable to .net 4.5 or later..

Also as suggested by @JotaBe, you might need to correctly decode the url request. In most case the %2F will be automatically translated to a slash '/'. So if you need to escape it you will need to decode the '%' char in the first place.. so your URL: will look something like: www.domain.com/api/orders/23%252F06%252F2015/customers

Notice the characters '%252F' will be translated to the actual '%2F'

EDIT

Ok here is the complete solution (Tried it and working for me):

  1. Assuming you have an API endpoint like so:

    [Route("orders/{date}/customers")]
    public HttpResponseMessage Get(string date)
    {
    }
    
  2. In the web.config you will need to set the requestPathInvalidCharacters to empty which tells the asp.net to allow all request

    <system.web>
        <httpRuntime targetFramework="4.5" requestPathInvalidCharacters=""/>                
    </system.web>
    <system.webServer>
        <security>
          <requestFiltering allowDoubleEscaping="true" />
        </security>
    </system.webServer>
    
  3. When the client sending the request to the API you will need to make sure to escape the '%' like so:

    www.domain.com/api/orders/23%252F06%252F2015/customers

  4. You then need to decode the request

    [Route("orders/{date}/customers")]
    public HttpResponseMessage Get(string date)
    {
            DateTime actualDate = DateTime.Parse(System.Net.WebUtility.UrlDecode(date)); // date is 23/06/2015
    }