The web API controller action name can not be determined by the type of the request - asp.net

Question

Doing a REST styled API I would like to know how I deal with duplicate action names:
public SchoolyearBrowseResponse Get(int userId)
{
return _service.GetSchoolyears(userId);
}
public SchoolyearOpenResponse Get(int id)
{
return _service.OpenSchoolyear(id);
}
It is said that the action`s name should be the request type. Now I have TWO Get methods with an int parameter which is not possible in C#.
Should I name the 2nd Get: Open(int id) ?

Answer 1

Doing a REST styled API I would like to know how I deal with duplicate action names
In a RESTful styled API you should never have to deal with such duplicates. In a RESTful styled API you are dealing with resources.
So in your particular case you have 2 resources:
a user
a school year
So you would have the following routes:
/users/{userId}/schoolyears -> which corresponds to your first action
/shoolyears/{id} -> which corresponds to your second action
So:
public class UsersController : ApiController
{
public SchoolyearBrowseResponse GetSchoolYears(int userId)
{
return _service.GetSchoolyears(userId);
}
}
and:
public class SchoolYearsController : ApiController
{
public SchoolyearOpenResponse Get(int id)
{
return _service.OpenSchoolyear(id);
}
}
and the final step is your routes:
public static void Register(HttpConfiguration config)
{
config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
name: "UserSchoolYears",
routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{userId}/schoolyears",
defaults: new { controller = "Users", action = "GetSchoolYears" }
);
config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
name: "DefaultApi",
routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{id}",
defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional }
);
}
As a side note I would like to mention that a school year for a user (your SchoolyearBrowseResponse) class hardly makes sense. Normally for a given user you have a list of school years. And if you wanted to get a specific school year for a user you would use /users/{userId}/schoolyears/{schoolyearid}.

Answer 2

a typical solution would be naming then in the following order :)
_service.OpenSchoolyearByYear(id);
_service.OpenSchoolyearByUserId(id);