WebApi route with urlEncoded part

Question

I have route:

config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
    name: "RestApi",
    routeTemplate: "rest/{storage}/{controller}/{id}/{action}",
    defaults: new
    {
        id = RouteParameter.Optional,
        action = "Index"
    }

{id} parameter can be URI itself, and I encode it. For example, route can be: /rest/main/nodes/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.company.com%2Fns%2FGeo%23United_States/rdf

But this way wrong, it isn't work. With simple {id} parameter it is OK.

What I should do to make it works?

Answer 1

What I should do to make it works?

Just use query string parameters if you intend to send arbitrary characters to the server:

/rest/main/nodes/rdf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.company.com%2Fns%2FGeo%23United_States

You may read the following blog post from Scott Hanselmann in which he covers the difficulties of using such values in the path portion of the url.

I quote his conclusion:

After ALL this effort to get crazy stuff in the Request Path, it's worth mentioning that simply keeping the values as a part of the Query String (remember WAY back at the beginning of this post?) is easier, cleaner, more flexible, and more secure.