Web API is Microsoft’s implementation of RESTful services in the Dot Net platform. It has an interesting history in that it was not originally part of the web services. However, as the product matured it became clear that it needed to be closely aligned with the simplicity of the HTTP protocol, resulting in moving the product development to the web team.
RESTful services are unique in that they do not maintain state and utilize verbs to determine what action is to take place. The verbs and parameters are contained in the web request. REST responses return a status code and an optional payload.
The basic nature of RESTful service is simplicity. Anyone working with SOAP or WCF will understand the complexity of using method based encapsulation for communicating data. In contrast, RESTful services have been around for quite a while, and continue to gain popularity, first in the non-Microsoft platforms, and recently in Web API itself.
It has been said that Web API may actually replace WCF as the communication mechanism for web services. The coding by convention allowing the resolution of controllers to handle HTTP verbs results in an easy to implement application once you get the hang of it. Anyone who has used WCF as a web service knows how complicated things are to maintain and test by comparison.
What do you think? Is Web API for you? Will it replace WCF in the Microsoft Stack? Are they competing products, or are there features of WCF that do not overlap? Share you opinion here, or drop an Email to btaylor@sswug.org.
Cheers,
Ben