WCF Rest Starter Kit --> WCF REST (WebHttpBinding) --> WCF Web API --> ASP.NET Web API (WCF to ASP.NET Migration!)
Hope many of you have noticed the ASP.NET MVC4 Beta announcement. In that the key thing to note is ASP.NET Web API. ASP.NET MVC 4 now includes ASP.NET Web API (single integrated web API framework), a framework for building and consuming HTTP services that can reach a broad range of clients including browsers, phones, and tablets.
Everything including technology has a start and an end. Including technology, it necessities evolution to survive. This evolution of Web API track from WCF to ASP.NET is good for below reasons:
Why HTTP?
Hope many of you have noticed the ASP.NET MVC4 Beta announcement. In that the key thing to note is ASP.NET Web API. ASP.NET MVC 4 now includes ASP.NET Web API (single integrated web API framework), a framework for building and consuming HTTP services that can reach a broad range of clients including browsers, phones, and tablets.
Everything including technology has a start and an end. Including technology, it necessities evolution to survive. This evolution of Web API track from WCF to ASP.NET is good for below reasons:
1. This will stop the confusion
among developers to use what ASP.NET MVC Controller (JSON
data from controller) or WCF Rest API
2. Moving to ASP.NET MVC enables to
better code re-use, easier & maintenance. One can use the same model to
expose your data as HTML, JSON, XML, ATOM, OData etc….No Need of one more WCF
Layer.
3. HTTPClient / System.Net.HTTP part of .NET
Framework 4.5 would be better suitable part of ASP.NET rather than WCF. Web API
name itself contains both Web & Services! And Http belongs to more of Web
than Services.
4. Remember one of the main goal for
WCF is unification of Microsoft’s distributed computing technologies (ASMX, .NET
Remoting, Enterprise Services, WSE, System.Messaging, System.Net etc) with
SOAP/XML as base framework. WCF won’t support or scale HTTP to full extent.
This is
not end of WCF, but the scope of exposing data via WCF is reduced (Mostly SOAP).
World is around REST now. In the competitive world, the system or technology that
are easily maintainable, sustainable, easy reach or interoperable including browsers,
phones (IPhone, Android, Windows Phone etc….), tablets (IPad) only survives. Restful approach follows most of the things –
Simple, easily maintainable, reach etc. With Web API moves into ASP.NET,
overall it is good for end-users. ASP.NET
Web API is great for building services that follow the RESTful way.
The
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application protocol for distributed,
collaborative systems. HTTP is not just for serving up web pages. HTTP is simple,
flexible, stateless and ubiquitous.
HTTP provides the
following nine
methods or verbs that we can perform on a identified resource.
- GET - Requests to just retrieve the specified resource.
- POST – Client sends data (message body) to the server for an action .
- PUT - Uploads or updates the resource.
- DELETE Deletes the specified resource.
- TRACE - allows the client to see what is being received at the other end of the request chain and use that data for testing or diagnostic information
- OPTIONS Returns the HTTP methods that the server supports for specified URL.
- PATCH Is used to apply partial modifications to a resource.
What is REST?
REST
defines an architectural style for building services in the “Web” way. REST is
not tied to any particular technology or platform – it’s just another way to
design things to work like the Web. Again this is not something new. REST
concept exists for a long time but not utilized to its full power, until now.
Operations in
Restful services are supported using HTTP methods (Like GET, PUT, POST, or
DELETE).
Definition:
"Representational state
transfer (REST)
is a style of software architecture for distributed hypermedia
systems such as the World Wide Web.
The term Representational State Transfer (REST) was introduced and defined in
2000 by Roy
Fielding[1][2] in his
doctoral dissertation. Fielding is one of the principal authors of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
specification versions 1.0 and 1.1." - From wikipedia.org
Why REST Popular?
Is Web Popular?! ;)
Web - WWW, which is omnipresent everywhere now.
Almost everyone knows about Web. RESTful architecture simply follows the tenets
of the web which provides the same reach to people. I will give you a specific simple
example - Just think of accessing a Service as below: You can access whatever
the book detail of any author you want through HTTP GET itself! No Soap
Messages, Proxy etc.
amazon.com/authors/{author}/{book}
Ex: amazon.com/authors/ArunGanesh/VS2010
amazon.com/authors/{author}?book={book}
Ex: amazon.com/authors/ArunGanesh?book=VS2010
Key
Items to remember (REST):
1. In Web, every resource being referred by a unique identifier, also known as
a universal resource identifier (URI).
URI / Segment of a URI map to Application Logic. In the above example you can
see that the segment of the URL itself being mapped to an application logic.
2. Utilize
HTTP
Verbs - HTTP GET, POST, PUT, DELETE etc.
3. Utilize HTTP Headers for representing what content type is required and
services is returning. For instance, you can represent things like: languages,
authentication, authorization, accepted encoding, char set, content type,
length etc...
What ASP.NET Web API provides:
The integrated stack supports the following
features:
- Modern HTTP programming model
- Full support for ASP.NET Routing
- Format flexibility
- HTTP Client integration
- Enabled OAuth and OData support
- Configuration simplification
- Content negotiation and custom formatters
- Model binding and validation
- Filters
- Query composition
- Easy to unit test
- Improved Inversion of Control (IoC) via DependencyResolver
- Code-based configuration
- Self-host
What’s the
key difference:
ASP.NET Web APIs
are based on controllers,
classes which derive from a new ApiController class.
WCF Web API
|
ASP.NET Web API
|
Service
|
Web API
controller
|
Operation
|
Action
|
Service
contract
|
Not applicable
|
Endpoint
|
Not applicable
|
URI templates
|
ASP.NET Routing
|
Message
handlers
|
Same
|
Formatters
|
Same
|
Operation
handlers
|
Filters, model
binders
|
NuGet
Packages:
Will post more on this topic in upcoming weeks.
