Add a custom response header in ApiController

You can explicitly add custom headers in a method like so:

[HttpGet]
[Route("home/students")]
public HttpResponseMessage GetStudents()
{
       // Get students from Database

       // Create the response
        var response = Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.OK, students);
    
        // Set headers for paging
        response.Headers.Add("X-Students-Total-Count", students.Count());
       
       return response;
}

For more information read this article: http://www.jerriepelser.com/blog/paging-in-aspnet-webapi-http-headers/