How to Route non-CRUD actions in a RESTful ASP.NET Web API?

Question

I am trying to design a RESTful web API for our service using ASP.NET Web API. I\'m running into trouble with figuring out how to route non-CRUD actions to the proper contr

Answer 1

To handle the lock/unlock scenario you could consider adding a State property to the Door object:

   public State State { get; set; }

where State is an enum of available values, e.g.

{
LockedFromOutsideRoom,
LockedFromInsideRoom,
Open
}

To clarify: That you're adding a state to the object is not against restful principles as the state is passed over the api every time you make a call to do something with the Door.

Then via the api you would send a PUT/POST request to change the state of the Door on each lock/unlock. Post would probably be better as it's only one property that gets updated:

POST: http://api.contoso.com/v1/doors/1234/state
body: {"State":"LockedFromInsideRoom"}