if you want all (unpublished / published ) content use the content Service.

// get the id of the type (by alias) 
IContentTypeService contentTypeService = ApplicationContext.Current.Services.ContentTypeService;
IContentType mytype = contentTypeService.GetContentType("mytype") ; 

// get all content by type
IContentService contentService = ApplicationContext.Current.Services.ContentService;
IEnumerable<IContent> items = contentService.GetContentOfContentType(mytype.Id); 

this gives you everything (published or not) but hits the database, if you just want published, you should i beleive use IPublishedContent, this blog post details how to get content from examine. http://shazwazza.com/post/Custom-MVC-routing-in-Umbraco

bit you will care about

public ActionResult Product(string id)
{
    var criteria = ExamineManager.Instance.DefaultSearchProvider
        .CreateSearchCriteria("content");
    var filter = criteria.NodeTypeAlias("Product").And().NodeName(id);
    var result = Umbraco.TypedSearch(filter.Compile()).ToArray();
    if (!result.Any())
    {
        throw new HttpException(404, "No product");
    }
    return View("Product", CreateRenderModel(result.First()));
}

in the example product is the type. so if you want them all just remove the And().NodeName(id) from the query

Hi Kevin

Thanks a lot for your response. I have tried to do what you have outlined, I can get it working using the ContentService but as you say it will hit the database hard.

The other example you sent looks great - but I am struggling because it returns a View, whereas the WebApi needs to return a typed object.

Any idea how I would return "result" through the WebApi?

Thanks

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