Web API help page duplicating Action for all areas

Question

I'm working with Web API 2, and it seems to pull up my existing API calls already, except it's duplicating all the calls for each area that i have. For example, say i have 3 areas, and in one of those i have an API call that looks like:

public IList<string> GetStringList(string id)
    {
        //do work here...
        return new List<string>{"a","b","c"};
    }

if i have 3 areas, then the web api help page will show:

GET area1/api/MyAPIController/GetStringList/{id}

GET area2/api/MyAPIController/GetStringList/{id}

GET area3/api/MyAPIController/GetStringList/{id}

and the MyAPIController only exists in 'area2'. Why is this showing 3 times, and how can i fix it? If it helps, my area registration for area2 is:

public class Area2AreaRegistration : AreaRegistration
{
    public override string AreaName
    {
        get
        {
            return "Area2";
        }
    }

    public override void RegisterArea(AreaRegistrationContext context)
    {
        context.MapRoute(
            "Area2_default",
            "Area2/{controller}/{action}/{id}",
            new { action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional }
        );

        context.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
    name: "Area2_ActionApi",
    routeTemplate: "Area2/api/{controller}/{action}/{id}",
    defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional }
);

    }
}

Answer 1

While not a solution to your problem, you can use attributes to map the routes for actions as a temporary workaround.

To enable attributes for routing add config.MapHttpAttributeRoutes(); to the registration in WebApiConfig, which should be within the App_Start folder.

public static void Register(HttpConfiguration config)
{
    // Attribute routing.
    config.MapHttpAttributeRoutes();

    // Convention-based routing.
    config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
        name: "DefaultApi",
        routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{id}",
        defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional }
    );
}

Once you've enabled attribute routing you can specify a route over an action:

public class BooksController : ApiController
{
    [Route("api/books")]
    public IEnumerable<Book> GetBooks() { ... }
}

You can read more here. Take a look at route prefixes(shown above) and make sure you enable routing with attributes as shown in the beginning of the page.

Edit:

In your case:

[Route("area2/api/MyAPIController/GetStringList/{id}")]
public IList<string> GetStringList(string id)
{
    //do work here...
    return new List<string>{"a","b","c"};
}