WebAPI – Multiple actions were found that match the request

Date [ 04 Oct 12 00:00 UTC ] Categories [ Tech ] Tags [ exception , route , webapi ]

WebAPI looks very suitable for exposing RESTful services for any web based application. So, during a recent implementation of WebAPI on a project I was receiving the Multiple actions were found that match the request exception.

To get some context below was my setup:

The route configuration:

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public static class WebApiConfig {
	public static void Register( HttpConfiguration config ) {
		config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
			name: "DefaultApi",
			routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{id}",
			defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional }
		);
	}
}

The controller:

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public class PIAPIController : ApiController {
	private readonly IFilterRepository repository = new FilterRepository( );

	public List&lt;AutoCompleteItems&gt; GetCampusList(string term = null ) {
		// business logic...
		return nv;
	}
	public List&lt;AutoCompleteItems&gt; GetDivisionList( string term = null ) {
		// business logic...
		return nv;
	}
}

The controller in issue has multiple Get actions with varying names, since all of this actions were addressing a similar unit of filters I had grouped them together in the same controller.

After Googling around for a while I came across the following useful answers on StackOverflow:

http://stackoverflow.com/a/12185249

http://stackoverflow.com/a/12703423

After changing the route config to

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public static void Register( HttpConfiguration config ) {
	config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
		name: "DefaultApiWithID",
		routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{id}",
		defaults: null
	);
	config.Routes.MapHttpRoute( "DefaultApiWithAction", "Api/{controller}/{action}" );
}

and decorating the action names with [ActionName("uniqueactionname")], the modifications did not help address the error.

But finally changing the order of routes in the route configuration solved the issue.

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public static void Register( HttpConfiguration config ) {
	config.Routes.MapHttpRoute( "DefaultApiWithAction", "Api/{controller}/{action}" );
	config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
		name: "DefaultApiWithID",
		routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{id}",
		defaults: null
	);
}

Lesson Learned: Move more greedy routes to the end.