Can you overload controller methods in ASP.NET MVC?

Question

I'm curious to see if you can overload controller methods in ASP.NET MVC. Whenever I try, I get the error below. The two methods accept different arguments. Is this something that cannot be done?

The current request for action 'MyMethod' on controller type 'MyController' is ambiguous between the following action methods:

Answer 1

You can use the attribute if you want your code to do overloading.

[ActionName("MyOverloadedName")] 

But, you'll have to use a different action name for the same http method (as others have said). So it's just semantics at that point. Would you rather have the name in your code or your attribute?

Phil has an article related to this: http://haacked.com/archive/2008/08/29/how-a-method-becomes-an-action.aspx

Answer 2

Yes. I've been able to do this by setting the HttpGet/HttpPost (or equivalent AcceptVerbs attribute) for each controller method to something distinct, i.e., HttpGet or HttpPost, but not both. That way it can tell based on the type of request which method to use.

[HttpGet] public ActionResult Show() {    ... }  [HttpPost] public ActionResult Show( string userName ) {    ... } 

One suggestion I have is that, for a case like this, would be to have a private implementation that both of your public Action methods rely on to avoid duplicating code.