ASP.NET WEB API – What and Why

Hi Friends,

Microsoft has introduced a helpful framework with ASP.NET MVC4 called WEB API for building the http based services.

In this article we will cover following points about this new framework

1) WHAT
2) WHY  WEB API

WHAT

ASP.net Web API is an api which helps in creating the http based client and server endpoints on top of the ASP.net framework.

The Client side http based programming model has been built in to the System.net and the server side http based programming model has been built in to the WCF.

The First version of WCF did not support the Http based services.
It strongly supported the traditional Soap based service endpoints which really lack in the many other features in http like caching , compression etc.

With the release of the .NET Framework 3.5 in November 2007, Microsoft released the feature to create the simple http based endpoints but it was again more embedded in the WCF.

So Microsoft WCF team has decided to come up with the framework which is completely used for the http based services ,
As ASP.NET team is more engage in the web / http  work , routing , html Microsoft has decided to merge this framework with the ASP.Net
and introduced WEB API with the ASP.NET MVC 4 release.

WHY

If we are implementing an application whether html 5 or mobile , they need services for accessing data or to artifact the system.
In the modern programming land scape services should be created by keeping wide range of clients in mind.

Most of the applications are accessing data as JSON using HTTP based services which is going to be a trend than accessing data from traditional Soap services.

 

This article is the summary of the video by Jon Flander on the pluralsight website.

please refer http://www.asp.net/web-api for details of web api.

 

Thanks

Ganesh Divekar