Can I overload a Web API get call?

Question

I'm trying to set up my Web API app to be able to accept something like

/api/product/1 where 1 is the ID and something like /api/product/somestringidentifier

The latter I can not get to hit my Get(string alias) method. The (int id) and GetProducts() work fine.

Routes

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

            config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
                name: "AliasSelector",
                routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{alias}"
            );

Controller

[AcceptVerbs("GET")]
 public IProduct Get(int id)
 {
    return new Product(id);
 }
 [AcceptVerbs("GET")]
 public IProduct Get(string alias)
 {
     return new Product(alias);
 }
 [AcceptVerbs("GET")]
 [ActionName("Products")]
 public IEnumerable<IProduct> GetProducts()
 {
      return new Products().ToList();
 }

Answer 1

Assuming that your id is always going to be an integer and alias is always going to be a string, you could try adding route constraints like so:

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

config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
    name: "AliasSelector",
    routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{alias}",
    constraints: new { alias= @"[a-zA-Z]+" }
);