C# – Web API in MVC solution in separate project

You don't use a file input control. Server side controls are not used in ASP.NET MVC. Checkout the following blog post which illustrates how to achieve this in ASP.NET MVC.

So you would start by creating an HTML form which would contain a file input:

@using (Html.BeginForm("Index", "Home", FormMethod.Post, new { enctype = "multipart/form-data" }))
{
    <input type="file" name="file" />
    <input type="submit" value="OK" />
}

and then you would have a controller to handle the upload:

public class HomeController : Controller
{
    // This action renders the form
    public ActionResult Index()
    {
        return View();
    }

    // This action handles the form POST and the upload
    [HttpPost]
    public ActionResult Index(HttpPostedFileBase file)
    {
        // Verify that the user selected a file
        if (file != null && file.ContentLength > 0) 
        {
            // extract only the filename
            var fileName = Path.GetFileName(file.FileName);
            // store the file inside ~/App_Data/uploads folder
            var path = Path.Combine(Server.MapPath("~/App_Data/uploads"), fileName);
            file.SaveAs(path);
        }
        // redirect back to the index action to show the form once again
        return RedirectToAction("Index");        
    }
}

Note: Read the comments of this answer, it can produce a XSS Vulnerability if you are using the default error handing of WebAPI

I just add the following in App_Start / WebApiConfig.cs class in my MVC Web API project.

config.Formatters.JsonFormatter.SupportedMediaTypes
    .Add(new MediaTypeHeaderValue("text/html") );

That makes sure you get JSON on most queries, but you can get XML when you send text/xml.

If you need to have the response Content-Type as application/json please check Todd's answer below.

NameSpace is using System.Net.Http.Headers.