Add WebAPI to existing aspnetcore MVC Project

Question

I have created a new Project, selected ASP.NET Core Web Application (.NET Core), then selected Web Application, Individual User Accounts.

All is good and the project works perfectly, but I want to add WebAPI functionality to this project, so that http://website.com/Home is MVC, and http://website.com/api/whatever is my api, I would like them both to use the same authentication database (so you can register on the MVC site and authenticate to the API).

I do not want to add a second project to the solution if I can avoid it.

Someone posted how to add WebAPI 4 to an existing MVC project but those instructions failed at step 1, add x to the Global.asax, which doesn't exist for an ASP.Net Core MVC Project.

Please help.

Answer 1

Your ASP.NET Core Controller already supports both MVC and WebAPI. In ASP.NET Core these frameworks were combined together. So all you need is declare a controller action but instead of returning ViewResult return your REST API model.

Example:

public class ValuesController : Controller
{
    [HttpGet]
    public List<string> Get()
    {
        return new List<string> { "Hello", "World" };
    }

    [HttpGet]
    [Route("values/{valueName}")]
    public string Get(string valueName)
    {
        return valueName;
    }
}

It must be accessible under GET: /api/values and GET /api/values/ + valueName, depending on configuration. These are most common use cases.

Good luck.