pass array of an object to webapi

Question

I have a .net mvc 4 webapi project that I'm trying to pass an array of an object to a method on my controller.

I've found some examples here on SO that talk about needing to set my object's properties with: param1=whatever&param2=bling&param3=blah.

But I don't see how I can pass in a collection using that.

Here is my method signature. Notice I've decorated the argument with the [FromUri] attribute.

public List<PhoneResult> GetPhoneNumbersByNumbers([FromUri] PhoneRequest[] id)
{
    List<PhoneResult> prs = new List<PhoneResult>();
    foreach (PhoneRequest pr in id)
    {
        prs.Add(PhoneNumberBL.GetSinglePhoneResult(pr.PhoneNumber, pr.RfiDate, pr.FinDate, pr.State));
    }
    return prs;
}

here is my simple PhoneRequest object:

public class PhoneRequest
{
    public string PhoneNumber { get; set; }
    public string RfiDate { get; set; }
    public string FinDate { get; set; }
    public string State { get; set; }
}

and here's a sample of what I'm using to pass in:

http://localhost:3610/api/phonenumber/getphonenumbersbynumbers/
   [{"PhoneNumber":"8016667777","RfiDate":"","FinDate":"2012-02-11","State":"UT"},
    {"PhoneNumber":"8018889999","RfiDate":"2012-12-01","FinDate":"","State":"UT"}]

using this comes back with "bad request"

I also tried this

http://localhost:3610/api/phonenumber/getphonenumbersbynumbers?
    id=[{"PhoneNumber":"8016667777","RfiDate":"","FinDate":"2012-02-11","State":"UT"},
        {"PhoneNumber":"8018889999","RfiDate":"2012-12-01","FinDate":"","State":"UT"}]

which does reach the method, but the array is null.

how can I pass in an array of my PhoneRequest object to my Web API method?

Answer 1

Try passing the PhoneRequest[] from the uri in this format:

http://localhost:3610/api/phonenumber/getphonenumbersbynumbers?
    id[0][PhoneNumber]=8016667777&id[0][FinDate]=2012-02-11&id[0][State]=UT&
    id[1][PhoneNumber]=8018889999&id[1][RfiDate]=2012-12-01&id[1][State]=UT

Answer 2

I suggest you use POST for this.

As you query string grows, you will run into problems with the maximum length of the URL, which is browser dependent.

If you have a lot of parameters to pass, a POST is perfectly acceptable even if you are really only GETting data. What you will lose, however, is the ability for the user to bookmark a particular page with the query string.

Answer 3

I created a custom model binder, the FieldValueModelBinder class, which can effectively pass any object containing nested array or generic list types of data with query strings having field-name pairs without imbedding any JSON and XML structures. The model binder can resolve all issues discussed above. Since this question was extended by the question ID 19302078, you can see details of my answer in that thread.