Defining a Default API Route

Follow Along

To follow along committing your changes to this course, you'll need to fork the aspnet-fitness-frog-spa repo. Then you can clone, commit, and push your changes to your fork like this:

git clone <your-fork>
cd aspnet-fitness-frog-spa
git checkout tags/v2.2 -b defining-a-default-api-route

Comparing Web API and MVC Default Routes

The default routes for Web API and MVC are similar, but also significantly different in two ways:

1. The Web API default route typically includes the literal path segment api. This helps to prevent collisions between Web API and MVC routes.
2. The Web API doesn't define a route parameter for the action. Instead, the request's HTTP method is used to determine which controller action method should be called.

For reference, here's a typical ASP.NET Web API default route:

config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
    name: "DefaultApi",
    routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{id}",
    defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional });

And a typical MVC default route:

routes.MapRoute(
    name: "Default", 
    url: "{controller}/{action}/{id}",
    defaults: new { controller = "Entries", 
        action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional } );