Can AddApiVersioning() be used without attributing every controller?

Question

I'm versioning my Asp.Net Web Api 2 api using config.AddApiVersioning() in my WebApiConfig. Each of my controllers is decorated with something like [Route("api/TestApi/v{version:apiVersion}/{action}/{id?}")].

I would like to remove most of those decorations and instead use something like this in my WebApiConfig:

config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
    "ApiControllerVersionActionId",
    "api/{controller}/v{version:apiVersion}/{action}/{id}",
    new { id = UrlParameter.Optional },
    new
    {
        // e.g., 1.0, 12.75
        apiVersion = @"^[0-9]+\.[0-9]+$",

        // only GUIDs or integers
        id = @"^(\{){0,1}(\(){0,1}[0-9a-fA-F]{8}\-{0,1}[0-9a-fA-F]{4}\-{0,1}[0-9a-fA-F]{4}\-{0,1}[0-9a-fA-F]{4}\-{0,1}[0-9a-fA-F]{12}(\)){0,1}(\}){0,1}$|^\d+$"
    }
);

My questions:

• Is this possible?
• Are there examples? Most examples I've found decorate all the controllers.

Answer 1

I have solved this issue and am now able to remove all the RouteAttributes from my controllers.

The issue was with the constraints. I've modified my MapHttpRoute to be the following:

config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
    "ApiControllerVersionActionId",
    "api/{controller}/v{apiVersion}/{action}/{id}",
    new { id = UrlParameter.Optional },
    new
    {
        apiVersion = new ApiVersionRouteConstraint(),

        // empty string, guid, or int
        id = @"^$|^(\{){0,1}(\(){0,1}[0-9a-fA-F]{8}\-{0,1}[0-9a-fA-F]{4}\-{0,1}[0-9a-fA-F]{4}\-{0,1}[0-9a-fA-F]{4}\-{0,1}[0-9a-fA-F]{12}(\)){0,1}(\}){0,1}$|^\d+$"
    }
);

Answer 2

I thought that I would also mention that you can version using API Version Conventions regardless of routing method (convention-based or attribute-based). There is out-of-the-box support to imperatively version controllers as well as a convention to version by containing namespace. You can also roll your own convention to determine which API versions are applied to controllers.

You add your convention to the configuration like this:

options.Conventions.Add( new MyVersioningConvention() );

If you want to use Direct Routing (aka attribute routing), but don't want to repeat the version segment over and over, there are other alternatives. You can use any of the following approaches in ASP.NET Web API:

1. Extend RoutePrefixAttribute and include the prefix automatically (ex: ApiRoutePrefixAttribute)
2. Create a custom IRoutePrefix, which would likely be applied via an attribute, but it doesn't have to be
3. Extend and replace the DefaultDirectRouteProvider
4. Implement a custom IDirectRouteProvider

I hope that provides some other useful solutions