WebApi Core / Swagger: “failed to load API definition” error

I was working with some ASP.NET WebApi code and needed to test something using the Swagger UI. Usually, it’s just a matter of starting the project and going to your /swagger directory. Unfortunately, in this case, I went to my swagger URL and got an error saying “Failed to load API definition — Fetch error — Internal Server Error /swagger/v1/swagger.json.” How do you fix this error?

I knew that it used to work but I’d just updated about a half zillion things in my code including upgrading to .NET Core 5 so I wasn’t really sure what broke it. I assumed the worst.

The dev tools in Edge was showing me that it was trying to access swagger.json but it was getting an HTTP 500 error. My guess was that I had a configuration problem in Startup.cs and that the swagger.json file either wasn’t being generated or it was in the wrong place. I checked a bunch of stuff and didn’t find anything.

I eventually started to figure out what was going wrong when I opened that call to swagger.json in its own tab.

The actual error message says that there’s an “ambiguous HTTP method for action”. I wasn’t really sure what that meant by helpfully the error message pointed me at the WebApi endpoint action that was causing the problem. Rather than being a problem with some kind of swagger config, the error was coming from the code that I’d just been working on.

Swashbuckle.AspNetCore.SwaggerGen.SwaggerGeneratorException: Ambiguous HTTP method for action - SwaggerError.WebApi.Controllers.WeatherForecastController.Overview (SwaggerError.WebApi). Actions require an explicit HttpMethod binding for Swagger/OpenAPI 3.0
   at Swashbuckle.AspNetCore.SwaggerGen.SwaggerGenerator.GenerateOperations(IEnumerable`1 apiDescriptions, SchemaRepository schemaRepository)
   at Swashbuckle.AspNetCore.SwaggerGen.SwaggerGenerator.GeneratePaths(IEnumerable`1 apiDescriptions, SchemaRepository schemaRepository)
   at Swashbuckle.AspNetCore.SwaggerGen.SwaggerGenerator.GetSwagger(String documentName, String host, String basePath)
   at Swashbuckle.AspNetCore.Swagger.SwaggerMiddleware.Invoke(HttpContext httpContext, ISwaggerProvider swaggerProvider)
   at Microsoft.AspNetCore.Diagnostics.DeveloperExceptionPageMiddleware.Invoke(HttpContext context)

Here’s the code that’s causing the problem:

[ApiController]
[Route("[controller]")]
public class WeatherForecastController : ControllerBase
{
    [Route("/[controller]/[action]/{id}")]
    public ActionResult Overview(int? id)
    {
        return Ok(id);
    }
}

Looks pretty ordinary, right? Nothing to exciting here. So what’s broken? What’s “ambiguous” about this? It’s missing the HttpGet attribute.

[ApiController]
[Route("[controller]")]
public class WeatherForecastController : ControllerBase
{
    [HttpGet]
    [Route("/[controller]/[action]/{id}")]
    public ActionResult Overview(int? id)
    {
        return Ok(id);
    }
}

As soon as I added that missing [HttpGet] attribute, the Swagger UI was working again.

Summary

In short, the problem was a problem in my code. I’d assumed that my WebApi controller action would default to HTTP GET but it seems that that doesn’t agree with Swagger. As soon as I added that missing attribute, everything was fine.

I hope this helps.

-Ben

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