ASP.NET Web Api Routing Customization

Question

I have WebApi controllers that end with the "Api" suffix in their names (For ex: StudentsApiController, InstructorsApiController). I do this to easily differentiate my MVC controllers from WebApi controllers. I want my WebApi routes to look similar to

http://localhost:50009/api/students/5 and not http://localhost:50009/api/studentsapi/5.

Currently to achieve this, I am setting up routes like

routes.MapHttpRoute(
name: "GetStudents",
routeTemplate: "api/students/{id}",
defaults: new { controller = "StudentsApi", id = RouteParameter.Optional });

routes.MapHttpRoute(
name: "GetInstructors",
routeTemplate: "api/instructors/{id}",
defaults: new { controller = "InstructorsApi", id = RouteParameter.Optional });

This is turning out to be very cumbersome as I have to add a route for each method in my controllers. I am hoping there should be an easy way to setup route templates that automatically adds the "api" suffix the controller name while processing routes.

Answer 1

Following @Youssef Moussaoui's direction I ended up writing the following code that solved the problem.

public class ApiControllerSelector : DefaultHttpControllerSelector
{
    public ApiControllerSelector(HttpConfiguration configuration)
        : base(configuration)
    {
    }

    public override string GetControllerName(HttpRequestMessage request)
    {
        if (request == null)
            throw new ArgumentNullException("request");

        IHttpRouteData routeData = request.GetRouteData();

        if (routeData == null)
            return null;

        // Look up controller in route data
        object controllerName;
        routeData.Values.TryGetValue("controller", out controllerName);

        if (controllerName != null)
            controllerName += "api";

        return (string)controllerName;
    }
}

And register it in Global.asax as

GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.Services.Replace(typeof(IHttpControllerSelector),
            new ApiControllerSelector(GlobalConfiguration.Configuration));