Is there a way to handle form post data in a Web Api controller?

Question

In `ASP.NET MVC` , one can access the form post data: ``` var thisData = Request.Form["this.data"]; ``` Is it possible to achieve the same functionality in a `Web API` ApiController?

Accepted Answer

ASP.NET Web API has become significantly more robust in dealing with different HTTP scenarios - especially streaming. As such only media type formatters normally touch the content and have to make a coherence of the content.

In ASP.NET MVC, `application/x-www-form-urlencoded` content type is a first class citizen (and treated especially since this is the content type of 95% of the POST requests) and we have the `FormsCollection` to provide dictionary access in access, whenever it is defined as an input parameter.

In ASP.NET Web API, `application/x-www-form-urlencoded` is yet another content type, and supposed to be read by its MediaTypeFormatter. As such ASP.NET Web API cannot make any assumption about the `Forms`.

The normal approach in ASP.NET Web API is to represent the form as a model so the media type formatter deserializes it. Alternative is to define the actions's parameter as `NameValueCollection`:

```
public void Post(NameValueCollection formData)
{
   var value = formData["key"];
}
```

Is there a way to handle form post data in a Web Api controller?

Solution

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