Question

I’m trying to set up a simple test to make a POST request to my self-hosted Web-API server.

var config = new HttpSelfHostConfiguration(new Uri(baseAddress));

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

server = new HttpSelfHostServer(config);
server.OpenAsync().Wait();

I added a Controller:

public class PayloadController : ApiController
{    
    public string Get()
    {
        return "Hello from GET";
    }

    public HttpResponseMessage PostItem(Payload payload)
    {
        // payload 
        //...
    }
}

And I do have the corresponding model (making sure it contains properties):

public class Payload
    {
        public string Date { get; set; }
        public string Command { get; set; }
    }

I’m using Rest Console on Chrome to test the server, getting correct results for the GET in my controller.

Issueing the following request as POST:

Request Url: http://localhost:8080/api/payload
Request Method: POST

Params: {
    "Date": "2012.09.26",
    "Command": "Hello"
}

EDIT: Content-Type is set to application/json and encoding to UTF-8

Setting a break-point at the controller shows that the POST params are not correctly deserialized into an Paylod object, the param is null.

What am I possibly missing?

Answer 1

You need to specify the request Content-Type as application/json

Edit

Complete response with info from the comments below:

If you are using REST console’s “request parameters” instead of “request payload raw body” it will not generate JSON out of them even when you specify application/json.

You need to paste raw JSON into the raw body field like this: http://screencast.com/t/iRWZqv91

{
    "Date": "2012.09.26",
    "Command": "Hello"
}