Adding an Attribute Route without parameters in ASP.NET MVC 5

Question

I have an API Controller Action defined as:

public async Task<IHttpActionResult> ChangePassword(string userId, string password)

My original plan was to pass both userId and password through the data attribute of an AJAX request instead of through the API url.

E.g.:

$.ajax({
    url: "/api/users/resetpassword",
    data: JSON.stringify({
        "userId" : userId,
        "password" : password
    }),
    dataType: "json",
    method: "POST",
    success: function () {
        $("#ResetPasswordModal").modal('toggle');
        toastr.success("Password Reset");
    },
    error: function () {
        $("#ResetPasswordModal").modal('toggle');
        toastr.error("Password could not be reset");
    }

});

However, if I apply the Attribute Route [Route("api/users/resetpassword")]

I get the error

No action was found on the controller 'Users' that matches the request

If I then replace the attribute route with [Route("api/users/{userId}/resetpassword/{password}")], the application is able to find the ChangePassword action successfully.

When applying Attribute Routes to Controller Actions, is it required that all attributes are included in the Route?

Answer 1

Create a model to hold the data sent from the client

public class ChangePasswordModel {
    public string userId { get; set; }
    public string password { get; set; }
}

update the action to expect the data in the body of the request

public class UsersController: ApiController {

    //...

    //POST api/users/resetpassword
    [HttpPost]
    [Route("api/users/resetpassword")]
    public async Task<IHttpActionResult> ChangePassword([FromBody]ChangePasswordModel data) {
        //...
    }

    //...
}

This assumes that attribute routing is already enabled in WebApiConfig.

config.MapHttpAttributeRoutes();

And is based on the following client details

url: "/api/users/resetpassword",
data: JSON.stringify({
    "userId" : userId,
    "password" : password
}),
dataType: "json",
method: "POST",