Web.API and FromBody - asp.net-mvc-4

Question

I'm a bit confused. I have a controller (derived from ApiController) that has the following method:
[ActionName("getusername")]
public string GetUserName(string name)
{
return "TestUser";
}
My routing is set up like this:
config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
name: "ActionApi",
routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{action}/{id}",
defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional }
);
I kept getting a 400 error when I try to hit /api/mycontroller/getusername/test with a GET in fiddler.
I found that everything worked when I added [FromBody] to the name parameter in GetUserName.
I was somehow thinking that [FromBody] was used for HttpPost, signalling that the parameter was in the body of the post, and would therefore not be needed for a GET. Looks like I was wrong though.
How does this work?

Answer 1

You need to either change your routing to:
config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
name: "ActionApi",
routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{action}/{name}",
defaults: new { name = RouteParameter.Optional }
);
or change the name of your parameter to:
[ActionName("getusername")]
public string GetUserName(string id)
{
return "TestUser";
}
Note: Additional routing parameters must match method parameter names.

Answer 2

You could also do the following if it is closer to what you were looking for:
// GET api/user?name=test
public string Get(string name)
{
return "TestUser";
}
This assumes you are using an ApiController named UserController and allows you to pass your name parameter as a query string. This way, you don't have to specify the ActionMethod but rather rely on the HTTP verb and matching route.