REST API 未返回预期结果

Question

I'm trying to follow the article Build RESTful API's with ASP.NET Web API to learn how to create a RESTful API.

I created the first project and controller, Contact .

public class ContactController : Controller
{
    // GET: Contact
    public string[] Index()
    {
        return new string[]
        {
            "Hello",
            "World"
        };
    }
}

But when I load the URL in a browser, instead of getting the response described in the article ( ["Hello","World"] ). The response I get is System.String[] .

I don't understand what I'm missing.

BTW, the article is from 2013. Does anyone know of a good article that is perhaps a little newer?

Answer 1

What you have now is simple ASP.NET MVC controller. For Web API controller you should inherit your controller from ApiController instead of Controller :

public class ContactController : ApiController

Also action names should start with HTTP verb. If you'll send GET request to /api/contact endpoint you'll get error

The requested resource does not support http method 'GET'.

By default action name is not used in route for Web API controllers. If you'll check default route configuration, it will be api/{controller}/id . Correct action is selected via HTTP method of request. In your case it should be GetXXX or simply Get

Answer 2

You cannot Return regular primitives from the Web Apis. At least if not if you are using a regular MVC Web API from .net. So, if this is the case you could do something like

public class ContactController : Controller
{
    // GET: Contact
    public JsonResult Index()
    {   
        return Json(new { value1: "Hello", value2: "world" }, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);

    }
}

Hope this helps