.NET WebAPI Attribute Routing and inheritance-open source projects OData/WebApi

I am playing around with the idea of having a base controller that uses a generic repository to provide the basic CRUD methods for my API controllers so that I don’t have to duplicate the same basic code in each new controller. But am running into problems with the routing attribute being recognized when it’s in the base controller. To show exactly what the problem I’m having I’ve created a really simple WebAPI controller.

When I have the Get method in the main Controller and it inherits from the ApiController directly I don’t have any problems and this works as expected.

[RoutePrefix("admin/test")]
public class TestController : ApiController
{
    [Route("{id:int:min(1)}")]
    public string Get(int id)
    {
        return "Success";
    }
}

When I move the Get method into a base controller it is returning the contents of the 404 page.

[RoutePrefix("admin/test")]
public class TestController : TestBaseController
{

}

public class TestBaseController : ApiController
{
    [Route("{id:int:min(1)}")]
    public string Get(int id)
    {
        return "Success";
    }
}

Some more interesting notes:

  • I can access the action at GET /Test/1. So it is finding it based on the default route still.

  • When I try to access POST /admin/test it returns the following JSON

    { “Message”:”No HTTP resource was found that matches the request URI ‘http://test.com/admin/test’.”, “MessageDetail”:”No type was found that matches the controller named ‘admin’.” }

Does anyone know of a way to get the routing to work with attributes from a base controller?