Simple types JSON serialization in ASP.net Web-api

Question

I've created a web api, which contains method:

POST Settings/SetPropertyValue?propertyName={propertyName}

public object SetPropertyValue(string propertyName, object propertyValue)
        {
            switch (propertyName)
            {
                  //Do the property assignment
            }
        }

When I visit help page, it shows following

When I try to invoke the method from fiddler, using XML example, it works fine, object propertyValue equals to POST value.

XML POST example:

POST http://localhost:99/webapi/Settings/SetPropertyValue?propertyName=myProperty HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: text/xml; charset=UTF-8
Host: localhost:99
Expect: 100-continue
Connection: Keep-Alive

<anyType>
  true
</anyType>

But how to POST JSON in this case? Does JSON handles "simple" data types, like object or string?

Answer 1

As far as I see there is no body you send. So both the XML and JSON bodies are empty.

You place all your properties in the query string.

I was reading this article about it and it seems you have to start your method with Post to make it a HTTP POST instead of GET.

Quote:

Note two things about this method:

The method name starts with "Post...". To create a new product, the client sends an HTTP POST request.

This is my test code. Maybe it is useful to you:

WebRequest request = HttpWebRequest.Create("http://localhost:12345/api/Values");

byte[] byteArray = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes("5");

request.ContentLength = byteArray.Length;
request.ContentType = "application/json";

request.Method = "POST";

Stream dataStream = request.GetRequestStream();
dataStream.Write(byteArray, 0, byteArray.Length);
dataStream.Close();

WebResponse response = request.GetResponse();

Stream data = response.GetResponseStream();

StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(data);
// Read the content.
string responseFromServer = reader.ReadToEnd();

The controller action involved here:

// POST api/values
public void Post([FromBody]string value)
{
    // check the value here
}