Question

Is it possible to have a generic web api that will support any model in your project?

class BaseApiController<T> :ApiController
{
    private IRepository<T> _repository;

    // inject repository

    public virtual IEnumerable<T> GetAll()
    {
       return _repository.GetAll();
    }

    public virtual T Get(int id)
    {
       return _repositry.Get(id);
    }

    public virtual void Post(T item)
    {
       _repository.Save(item);
    }
    // etc...
}

class FooApiController : BaseApiController<Foo>
{
   //..

}

class BarApiController : BaseApiController<Bar>
{
   //..
}

Would this be a good approach?

After all, i m just repeating the CRUD methods ? Can i use this base class to do the work for me?

is this OK? would you do this? any better ideas?

Answer 1

I did this for a small project to get something up and running to demo to a client. Once I got into specifics of business rules, validation and other considerations, I ended up having to override the CRUD methods from my base class so it didn’t pan out as a long term implementation.

I ran into problems with the routing, because not everything used an ID of the same type (I was working with an existing system). Some tables had int primary keys, some had strings and others had guids.

I ended up having problems with that as well. In the end, while it seemed slick when I first did it, actually using it in a real world implementation proved to be a different matter and didn’t put me any farther ahead at all.