Support aliased arguments in get requests for web api - asp.net-web-api2

Question

Background
I have a web api project which uses complex types for GET requests, here is an example of a controller method, and its associated complex type
[RoutePrefix("api")]
public class MyController : ApiController
{
[Route("Something")]
public IHttpActionResult GetSomething([FromUri]RequestObject request)
{
// do something to get "data"
return Ok(data);
}
}
// elsewhere
public class RequestObject
{
[Required]
public string SomeValue{get;set;}
}
This works with a url such as http://domain.com/api/Something?SomeValue=foo.
I would like to use alias' for these parameters, for which I will do some complex stuff (once I have this working) but effectively I have defined an attribute AliasAttribute.
[AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Property,AllowMultiple=true)]
public class AliasAttribute : Attribute
{
public string ParameterName { get; private set; }
public AliasAttribute(string parameterName)
{
this.ParameterName = parameterName;
}
}
Which I would like to adorn onto my request model like so:
// elsewhere
public class RequestObject
{
[Required,Alias("val")]
public string SomeValue{get;set;}
}
Allowing my url to shorten to http://domain.com/api/Something?val=foo. This is a contrived and simplified example, but hopefully demonstrates the background.
Problem
ModelBinding in web api has become very complex compared to Mvc model binding. I am getting twisted up between IModelBinder, IValueProvider, HttpParameterBinding et al.
I would like an example of where I should hook in to the model binding to allow me to write the value to my model from the querystring - note that I only use this aliasing behaviour when the route uses the FromUri attribute (see MyController.GetSomething above).

Answer 1

Question title: Support aliased arguments in get requests for web api. I think you are re-inventing a wheel here AliasAttribute , and have not given a really good reason why you don't want to use community ways of doing this.
I have done something similar with Newtonsoft.Json serializer. But if you want something ootb I'd have to google around.
public class RequestObject
{
[Required]
[JsonProperty("vla")]
public string SomeValue{get;set;}
}
Example SO that uses it: .Net NewtonSoft Json Deserialize map to a different property name
Here is a more agnostic way to do it.
[DataContract]
public class RequestObject
{
[DataMember(Name="val", IsRequired=true)]
public string SomeValue{get;set;}
}