Generating Route Url to MVC controller action from WebAPI

Question

I'm used to generating route URLs to other controller actions within an MVC controller action using something similar to below:

public class ApplicationController : Controller
{
    public ActionResult Index( )
    {
        var url = Url.RouteUrl("routename",
           new { controller = "Application", Action = "Index2" , other="other" });
    }

    public ActionResult Index2( string other)
    {
    }
}

But I also need to be able to generate URLs to MVC controller actions from within webapi too, How would I go about doing this?

There seems to be a UrlHelper property on the APIController but I cant find any examples of how to use this and have not been able to figure it out myself.

UPDATE : The reason I am trying to generate a url is that this particular webapi method sends an email which provides the recipient with a link to direct the user back to an appropriate section of the site. I obviously want to get away from hardcoding this as it will not work for different deployments and also if I begin changing the routing this link will be broken. Is there a better approach to doing this?

Solution

You can use MVC route names as well with web API UrlHelper. Example,

 Url.Link("Default", new { Controller = "Account", Action = "Login" });

or

 Url.Route("Default", new { Controller = "Account", Action = "Login" });

Comments

[Steve]

@TrueBlueAussie you're looking at the wrong UrlHelper. Look at the http one not the mvc one.

[Steve]

msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/…. If you are using attribute routing, name your routes.

[Tito]

Are we sure this is possible? I get 'A route named '...' could not be found' exception and this question suggests it cannot be done: stackoverflow.com/questions/29147486/…