Choose WCF if you want to use Request-Reply, One Way, and Duplex message exchange patterns.Choose WCF if you want to build service with WS-* standards like Reliable Messaging, Transactions, Message Security.Choose WCF if your service needs to support multiple protocols such as HTTP, TCP, Named pipe.Supports RESTful services but with limitations.

Uses web.config and attributes to configure a service. Web API can be configured using HttpConfiguration class but not in web.config. Supports Reliable Messaging and Transactions. Uses Service, Operation and Data contracts.ĭoes not support Reliable Messaging and transaction. Uses routing and controller concept similar to ASP.NET MVC. Supports HTTP, TCP, UDP and custom transport protocol. HttpClient can be used in ASP.MVC server side, Windows Form application, Console application or other apps.

ASP.NET Web API framework includes new HttpClient to communicate with Web API server.

ASP.NET Web API can be hosted in IIS, Self-hosted or other web server that supports.

Built-in support for JSON, XML, BSON format.

ASP.NET Web API supports different formats of response data.

ASP.NET Web API maps HTTP verbs to method names.

ASP.NET Web API is built on top of ASP.NET and supports ASP.NET request/response pipeline.

ASP.NET Web API is an ideal platform for building RESTful services.

It is like a webservice or WCF service but the exception is that it only supports HTTP protocol. It works more or less the same way as ASP.NET MVC web application except that it sends data as a response instead of html view. The ASP.NET Web API is an extensible framework for building HTTP based services that can be accessed in different applications on different platforms such as web, windows, mobile etc. NET etc.įor example, Twitter's REST APIs provide programmatic access to read and write data using which we can integrate twitter's capabilities into our own application.

We can build Web API using different technologies such as Java.

Web API as the name suggests, is an API over the web which can be accessed using HTTP protocol. To put it in simple terms, API is some kind of interface which has a set of functions that allow programmers to access specific features or data of an application, operating system or other services. Before we understand what is Web API, let's see what is an API (Application Programing Interface).Īs per Wikipedia's Definition of API: In computer programming, an application programming interface (API) is a set of subroutine definitions, protocols, and tools for building software and applications.

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