C# – ASP.NET Core API POST parameter is always null

ajaxasp.net-coreasp.net-web-apic

I have read the following:

My endpoint:

[HttpPost]
[Route("/getter/validatecookie")]
public async Task<IActionResult> GetRankings([FromBody] string cookie)
{
    int world = 5;
    ApiGetter getter = new ApiGetter(_config, cookie);
    if (!await IsValidCookie(getter, world))
    {
        return BadRequest("Invalid CotG Session");
    }
    HttpContext.Session.SetString("cotgCookie", cookie);
    return Ok();
}

My request:

$http.post(ENDPOINTS["Validate Cookie"],  cookie , {'Content-Type': 'application/json'});

Where cookie is the a string I am sending from the user input.

The request posts to the endpoint with the appropriate data. However, my string is always null. I have tried removing the [FromBody] tag, as well as adding a = in front of the posted data with no luck. I have also tried adding and removing different content types with all combinations of the above.

The reason why I am doing this specific action is long and does not matter for this question.

Why is my parameter always null no matter what I seem to do?

Edit: I have also tried using {cookie: cookie}

Edit2: The request:

Request URL:http://localhost:54093/getter/validatecookie
Request Method:POST
Status Code:400 Bad Request
Remote Address:[::1]:54093

Response Headers

Content-Type:text/plain; charset=utf-8
Date:Mon, 23 Jan 2017 03:12:54 GMT
Server:Kestrel
Transfer-Encoding:chunked
X-Powered-By:ASP.NET
X-SourceFiles:=?UTF-8?B?QzpcVXNlcnNcRG91Z2xhc2cxNGJcRG9jdW1lbnRzXFByb2dyYW1taW5nXENvdEdcQ290RyBBcHBcc3JjXENvdEdcZ2V0dGVyXHZhbGlkYXRlY29va2ll?=

Request Headers

POST /getter/validatecookie HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost:54093
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Length: 221
Accept: application/json, text/plain, */*
Origin: http://localhost:54093
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/55.0.2883.87 Safari/537.36
Content-Type: application/json;charset=UTF-8
Referer: http://localhost:54093/
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8

Request Payload

=sec_session_id=[redacted]; _ga=[redacted]; AWSELB=[redacted]

Best Answer

The problem is that the Content-Type is application/json, whereas the request payload is actually text/plain. That will cause a 415 Unsupported Media Type HTTP error.

You have at least two options to align then Content-Type and the actual content.

Use application/json

Keep the Content-Type as application/json and make sure the request payload is valid JSON. For instance, make your request payload this: 

{
    "cookie": "=sec_session_id=[redacted]; _ga=[redacted]; AWSELB=[redacted]"
}

Then the action signature needs to accept an object with the same shape as the JSON object.

public class CookieWrapper
{
    public string Cookie { get; set; }
}

Instead of the CookieWrapper class, or you can accept dynamic, or a Dictionary<string, string> and access it like cookie["cookie"] in the endpoint

public IActionResult GetRankings([FromBody] CookieWrapper cookie)

public IActionResult GetRankings([FromBody] dynamic cookie)

public IActionResult GetRankings([FromBody] Dictionary<string, string> cookie)

Use text/plain

The other alternative is to change your Content-Type to text/plain and to add a plain text input formatter to your project. To do that, create the following class. 

public class TextPlainInputFormatter : TextInputFormatter
{
    public TextPlainInputFormatter()
    {
        SupportedMediaTypes.Add("text/plain");
        SupportedEncodings.Add(UTF8EncodingWithoutBOM);
        SupportedEncodings.Add(UTF16EncodingLittleEndian);
    }

    protected override bool CanReadType(Type type)
    {
        return type == typeof(string);
    }

    public override async Task<InputFormatterResult> ReadRequestBodyAsync(
        InputFormatterContext context, 
        Encoding encoding)
    {
        string data = null;
        using (var streamReader = context.ReaderFactory(
            context.HttpContext.Request.Body, 
            encoding))
        {
            data = await streamReader.ReadToEndAsync();
        }

        return InputFormatterResult.Success(data);
    }
}

And configure Mvc to use it. 

services.AddMvc(options =>
{
    options.InputFormatters.Add(new TextPlainInputFormatter());
});

See also

https://github.com/aspnet/Mvc/issues/5137

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