Controller cannot be found

Question

I'm working on an ASP.NET MVC 4 site. I have an ArtistController within the Controllers folder.

The ArtistController has a Get method:

public ActionResult Get(string paramOne, string paramTwo)

In RouteConfig.cs I have this route, before Default route:

routes.MapRoute(
            name: "artistApi",
            url: "api/artist/{action}/{id}",
            defaults: new { controller = "Artist", action = "Get", id = UrlParameter.Optional }
            );

When I try to test this call, I get:

No HTTP resource was found that matches the request URI. No type was found that matches the controller named 'Artist'.

It works if I remove the api part from the route:

url: "artist/{action}/{id}"

I am not using WebApi, just a normal Controller.

Any idea on why this route doesn't find the controller?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Make sure you don't have a WebApiConfig.cs file in your App_Start folder. This may be overriding your route definition.

Answer 2

Most likely your routes are not ordered properly - if api/ is before your more specific route it will match first and never reach your new route.

// More specific routes should go before generic ones:
routes.MapRoute(
        name: "artistApi",
        url: "api/artist/{action}/{id}",...);
routes.MapHttpRoute(
    name: "API Default",
    routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{id}",
    defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional }
);

Answer 3

If I understands correctly,

url: "api/artist/{action}/{id}" line takes id as your querystring

ex www.yourwebsite/youractioncontroller/1

your actionResult takes two querystring which MVC does not understand what to do

one morething is "artist" need to be your controller which normally {controller}

or your artist controller should be artistContoller