Creating an OData controller that supports API versioning isn't much different from creating a regular OData controller. The following controller depicts a service that support API version 1.0 and 2.0.

[ApiVersion( 1.0 )]
[ApiVersion( 2.0 )]
public class PeopleController : ODataController
{
  // GET ~/people?api-version=[1.0|2.0]
  public async Task<IActionResult> Get() => Ok( new[] { new Person() } );

  // GET ~/people/1?api-version=[1.0|2.0]
  public async Task<IActionResult> Get( int key ) => Ok( new Person() );

  // PATCH ~/people/1?api-version=2.0
  [MapToApiVersion( 2.0 )]
  public async Task<IActionResult> Patch( int key, Delta<Person> delta )
  {
      if ( !ModelState.IsValid )
      {
          return BadRequest( ModelState );
      }

      var person = new Person();
      delta.Patch( person );
      return Updated( person );
  }
}

The PATCH method is only supported in API version 2.0 of the service. To be truly OData compliant, this service should define an action mapped to API version 1.0 that always returns HTTP status code 501 (Not Implemented) instead of falling back to HTTP status code 400 (Bad Request) or 404 (Not Found).

If you reviewed the Person model and configuration example for the IModelConfiguration, you'll know what we configured a single Person object with different properties available in different API versions. The default OData model validation does some automatic heavy lifting for us using the defined EDM model. In addition to the other normal validation you might have from Data Annotations, the current EDM model will provide further validation. For example, even though the Person object has a Phone property, it was not defined until API version 3.0. If you try to send a PATCH request like this:

PATCH /people/1?api-version=2.0 HTTP/2
Content-Type: application/json
Content-Length: 27

{ "Phone": "555-555-5555" }

the built-in OData model validation will fail. The response will end up being HTTP status code 400 (Bad Request) with an error message that indicates the Phone property does not exist. In version 2.0 of the service, that is true and the correct behavior.

Service authors can choose to split service API versions across multiple controller types. In fact, for all but the simplest of version variations, this is the recommended approach. You may, however, notice something extra and a little unusual about the attribution for this controller.

Under the hood, the OData implementation still uses convention-based routing. When we split services across multiple controller types, the new service implementation cannot have the same name. The only exception to this rule is if you create version-specific namespaces for each version of the service. If the name of the controller cannot be the same as the original controller type and we're stuck with convention-based routing, how to do indicate what the name of the controller should be? Enter the ControllerNameAttribute.

The ControllerNameAttribute allows you to specify an arbitrary name for a controller. In the strictest sense, this is not convention-based; however, short of using different namespaces, there isn't a way to define the correct name of the controller. Without the ControllerNameAttribute, this controller would be named People2, which won't match any routes. In OData, the controller route is paired with the corresponding entity set name. The API version services honor this attribute and will use the controller name defined by the attribute over the default convention name when present.

[ApiVersion( 3.0 )]
[ControllerName( "People" )]
public class People2Controller : ODataController
{
    // GET ~/people?api-version=3.0
    public IActionResult Get() => Ok( new[] { new Person() } );

    // GET ~/people/1?api-version=3.0
    public IActionResult Get( int key ) => Ok( new Person() );

    // PATCH ~/people/1?api-version=3.0
    public IActionResult Patch( int key, Delta<Person> delta )
    {
        if ( !ModelState.IsValid )
        {
            return BadRequest( ModelState );
        }

        var person = new Person();
        delta.Patch( person );
        return Updated( person );
    }
}