Best practices

Adding [ApiController] on a controller class has various benefits. Especially the automatic model validation and problem details parts.

The problem with this attribute is that it's easy to forget to add it, so I want to add it globally in one place.

One way to do that is to add this line somewhere in the project.

[assembly: ApiController]

My architecture is a modular monolith, with a single API project that registers controllers from other projects using ConfigureApplicationPartManager . That means that I would need to add [assembly: ApiController] to each project to have it auto applied.

Is there a better way?

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3 Replies 3

Guru Stron
•

Another option according to the docs is to create a base class with aforementioned attribute:

[ApiController]
public class MyControllerBase : ControllerBase
{
}

And inherit all controllers in other assemblies from it:

[Produces(MediaTypeNames.Application.Json)]
[Route("[controller]")]
public class SomeController : MyControllerBase

This has a potential benefit of sharing some other stuff too.

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LLL
•

Yeah I saw that one, but we're already using ControllerBase in all places and it's easy to forget to use the base class as well, so I want a fully fool-proof solution.

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Alexander Petrov
•

You can write unit tests that will check for the attribute on the controllers. So it won't be possible to forget it.
ArchUnitNET may help with this.

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