This is an opinionated convention for versioning web APIs. It extends Microsoft ASP.Net API Versioning by introducing a new convention and attributes.
- There is only 1 supported API version at any given time (the latest). All other versions are deprecated.
- Only numbered major versions allowed (e.g
V1,V2,V3, etc.) - When a new API version is introduced, all actions are automatically added to the new API version (unless explicitly marked as removed).
- Simplified api developer story - we only need to make changes where there are differences between versions. Previously we would need to manually add attributes to multiple classes and methods that have not had any changes.
- Less error prone - Less chance of making a mistake when introducing a new api version.
This does not detail how to install swagger with api versioning, this is however installed in the example project. More information can be found here.
This is a demonstration on how to use the library, it may not follow best practice. Generally speaking we bump the api version when we introduce a breaking change.
Install nuget package to your asp.net core project...
Todo once on Nuget
Configure api versioning for V1 in Startup.cs
- Override the default conventions with
IntroducedApiVersionConventionBuilder
services.AddApiVersioning(options =>
{
options.Conventions = new IntroducedApiVersionConventionBuilder(1, 1);
});Decorate a controller with [IntroducedInApiVersion(1)]
- This means that this controller and all of it's actions will be available in V1 of the API unless they are explicitly introduced in another version, or removed.
- We can have many controllers intrduced in the same api version.
// For demonstration purposes we will use uri versioning
[Route("api/v{api-version:apiVersion}/[controller]")]
[ApiController]
[IntroducedInApiVersion(1)]
public class ValuesController : ControllerBase
{
// GET api/v1/values
[HttpGet]
public ActionResult<IEnumerable<string>> Get()
{
return new string[] {"value1", "value2"};
}
}Say we want to increase the api versions (so have V1 deprecated and V2 supported), we can achieve this by updating the second argument to IntroducedApiVersionConventionBuilder in Startup.cs:
services.AddApiVersioning(options =>
{
// options.Conventions = new IntroducedApiVersionConventionBuilder(1, 1);
options.Conventions = new IntroducedApiVersionConventionBuilder(1, 2);
});Our method in ValuesController is now in both v1 and v2.
// GET api/v1/values (deprecated)
// GET api/v2/values
[HttpGet]
public ActionResult<IEnumerable<string>> Get()
{
return new string[] {"value1", "value2"};
}We can add a new method to this controller, adding the [IntroducedInApiVersion(2) attribute. This action will only be available in v2 onwards (but not v1).
// GET api/v2/values/123
[HttpGet("{id}")]
[IntroducedInApiVersion(2)]
public ActionResult<string> Get(int id)
{
return $"{id}";
}We can also add another controller, and introduce this in v2.
[Route("api/v{api-version:apiVersion}/[controller]")]
[ApiController]
[IntroducedInApiVersion(2)]
public class AnotherController : ControllerBase
{
// GET api/v2/another
[HttpGet]
public ActionResult<IEnumerable<string>> Get()
{
return new string[] {"value1", "value2"};
}
// GET api/v2/another/5
[HttpGet("{id}")]
[RemovedAsOfApiVersion(3)]
public ActionResult<string> Get(int id)
{
return "value";
}
}Let's add a new api version by updating the second argument to IntroducedApiVersionConventionBuilder in Startup.cs:
services.AddApiVersioning(options =>
{
// options.Conventions = new IntroducedApiVersionConventionBuilder(1, 2);
options.Conventions = new IntroducedApiVersionConventionBuilder(1, 3);
});We now have 3 versions
- V1 (deprecated)
- V2 (deprecated)
- V3 (supported)
Let us remove ValuesController from V3. We do this
// For demonstration purposes we will use uri versioning
[Route("api/v{api-version:apiVersion}/[controller]")]
[ApiController]
[IntroducedInApiVersion(1)]
[RemovedAsOfApiVersion(3)]
public class ValuesController : ControllerBase
{
// GET api/v1/values
// GET api/v2/values
// Doesn't exist in v3
[HttpGet]
public ActionResult<IEnumerable<string>> Get()
{
return new string[] {"value1", "value2"};
}
// GET api/v2/values/123
// Doesn't exist in v3
[HttpGet("{id}")]
[IntroducedInApiVersion(2)]
public ActionResult<string> Get(int id)
{
return $"{id}";
}
}Let's say we make a breaking change, say some business rule has changed and ids now have some sort of prefix.
We can mark the old action as RemovedAsOfApiVersion(3) and introduce a new action that supports this changed requirement with the IntroducedInApiVersion(3)
[Route("api/v{api-version:apiVersion}/[controller]")]
[ApiController]
[IntroducedInApiVersion(2)]
public class AnotherController : ControllerBase
{
// Other methods not shown for clarity
// GET api/v2/another/5
[HttpGet("{id}")]
[RemovedAsOfApiVersion(3)]
public ActionResult<string> Get(int id)
{
return "value";
}
// GET api/v3/another/x-5
[HttpGet("{id}")]
[IntroducedInApiVersion(3)]
public ActionResult<string> Get(string id)
{
return "value";
}
}Imagine nobody is using V1 of our API anymore. We can easily remove it by updating IntroducedApiVersionConventionBuilder in Startup.cs:
services.AddApiVersioning(options =>
{
// options.Conventions = new IntroducedApiVersionConventionBuilder(1, 3);
options.Conventions = new IntroducedApiVersionConventionBuilder(2, 3);
});Now any routes with api/v1/ have been removed.
Any code that is marked with attribute RemovedAsOfApiVersion(3) can be deleted.
Checkout the example project Todo: Add Link to Github to see how this all works, and feel free to ask any questions.
If you are having trouble running the example with https on your local dev machine, make sure you have trusted the dev certificate.
Run from CLI: dotnet dev-certs https --trust
More information in Microsoft docs.
At the moment only ASP.Net Core is supported. If there is demand we can look at adding this - I don't think it would be too difficult.
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