how to post arbitrary json object to webapi

Question

How do I / is it possible to pass in a json object to a webapi controller (POST) and not have a class to map it to, but rather handle it as arbitrary content?

Answer 1

You can have your post method that takes in a HttpRequestMessage to by pass the model binding logic and you can read the content of the request directly:

    public HttpResponseMessage Post(HttpRequestMessage req)
    {
        var data = req.Content.ReadAsStringAsync().Result; // using .Result here for simplicity...
        ...

    }

By the way, the reason why the action that takes in JObject doesn't work is because of 'ObjectId("...")' that is used as the value of "_id" in your data...