Introduction To ASP.Net WEB API

Before we understand what is Web API, let’s see what is an API (Application Programing Interface).

What Is API ?

As per Wikipedia’s Definition of API: In computer programming, (API) is a set of subroutine definitions, protocols, and tools for building software and applications.

Some Examples of APIs

1. Weather Snippets

2. Log-in Using XYZ

3. Pay with PayPal

Web API In A Single Picture

Example No 1

Example No 2

What Is ASP.NET WEB API ?

• Web API allows users to access a particular resource using HTTP protocol.
• We can build Web API using different technologies like .NET, PHP, JAVA, PYTHON etc
• In .Net Microsoft has created a framework for web API called ASP.NET WEB API.
• ASP.NET Web API is a framework that makes it easy to build HTTP web services (Restful HTTP services).
• It is provided by Dot Net Framework.
• That web services reaches a broad range of clients, including browser, mobile applications, Desktop application and IOTs.
• It is very similar to ASP.NET MVC since it contains the MVC features.
• Web API is a programming interface/application type that provides communication or interaction between software applications.
• Web API is often used to provide an interface for web sites and client applications to have data access.
• Web APIs can be used to access data from a database and save data back to the database.

What is Restful Services?

• Rest Stands for “Representational state transfer”.
• Its introduce in 2000 by Roy Fielding.
• In REST architecture, a REST Server simply provides access to resources and the REST client accesses and presents the resources.
• Here each resource is identified by URIs/ Global IDs.
• A resource is any information that has name like image, entity, document etc.
• REST uses various representations to represent a resource like Text, JSON and XML. JSON is now the most popular format being used in Web Services.

REST architectural pattern specifies a set of constraints that a system adhere to.

• Client Server
• Stateless
• Cacheable
• Uniform Interface

Routing In Web API