Can I overload a Web API get call? - asp.net-web-api-routing

Question

I'm trying to set up my Web API app to be able to accept something like
/api/product/1 where 1 is the ID and something like /api/product/somestringidentifier
The latter I can not get to hit my Get(string alias) method. The (int id) and GetProducts() work fine.
Routes
config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
name: "DefaultApi",
routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{id}",
defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional }
);
config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
name: "AliasSelector",
routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{alias}"
);
Controller
[AcceptVerbs("GET")]
public IProduct Get(int id)
{
return new Product(id);
}
[AcceptVerbs("GET")]
public IProduct Get(string alias)
{
return new Product(alias);
}
[AcceptVerbs("GET")]
[ActionName("Products")]
public IEnumerable<IProduct> GetProducts()
{
return new Products().ToList();
}

Answer 1

Assuming that your id is always going to be an integer and alias is always going to be a string, you could try adding route constraints like so:
config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
name: "DefaultApi",
routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{id}",
defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional },
constraints: new { id = #"\d*" }
);
config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
name: "AliasSelector",
routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{alias}",
constraints: new { alias= #"[a-zA-Z]+" }
);