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Introduction
“I hear...I forget, I see...and I remember, I do...and I understand”
—Confucius
e Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the application-level protocol that powers the World Wide Web. One
of the greatest characteristics of HTTP is that it nds support in multiple platforms. HTTP is the lowest common
denominator of many platforms and devices. Hence, the primary benet of creating an HTTP-based service is
reachability. A broad range of clients in disparate platforms can consume your HTTP services.
ASP.NET Web API is a framework from Microsoft for building HTTP services. It is not the only possible means for
building HTTP services in the .NET technology stack; there is Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) as well,
but the ASP.NET Web API framework embraces HTTP instead of ghting against it or abstracting it away. ASP.NET
Web API enables you to create HTTP services through the powerful ASP.NET MVC programming model of preferring
convention over conguration, which is familiar to many .NET web developers. Some of the best features from ASP.
NET MVC, such as routing, model binding, and validation, are all part of ASP.NET Web API as well. ASP.NET Web API
also lends itself well to unit testing, in a similar way toASP.NET MVC.
is book, Practical ASP.NET Web API, is a practical guide that will help you master the basics of the great ASP.
NET Web API framework in a hands-on way. It takes a code-centric approach that will help you grasp the concepts by
seeing them in action as you code, run, and debug the projects that you create as you follow the exercises of a chapter.
ough the main focus of the book is the practice, which is the ‘how’ part of ASP.NET Web API framework
development, the ‘what’ and ‘why’ parts are implicitly covered to the extent needed for you to understand and
appreciate the underlying theoretical concepts demonstrated by the practical code, as you work through the various
scenarios. You will see a lot of code, covering all the practical and basic scenarios that are commonly encountered by
developers. e recommended approach that will provide the maximum benet is to follow this book’s exercises in
sequence and code-along. Although it is a bit of work, I recommend you manually type the code instead of copying
and pasting it from the book’s download les into the Visual Studio classes you work on. is will help you grasp what
you are trying to do, as you work through an exercise. However, if having the completed source code by your side will
be of help, you can nd the code for the examples shown in this book on the Apress web site, www.apress.com. A link
can be found on the book’s information page under the Source Code/Downloads tab.
If you are looking for a book to just read through and gain an understanding of the ASP.NET Web API framework
by simply looking at code listings, this is mostly not your book. While you will see lots of code, this is not a recipe book.
ough you will nd the code listings in the book useful and relevant for many of the scenarios you face day-to-day,
the intention of this book is not to provide you ready-made code that you can copy and paste into the code you are
working on in a real-life project and forge ahead. e objective instead is to provide you the hands-on experience
of learning the basics of the ASP.NET Web API framework. In short, this book follows the proverb quoted in the
epigraph—do, and you will understand.
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