Introduction to Web API

In the world of web, API is playing a big role. API stands for application programming interface.

What is Web API?

Web API is a framework which is used to build HTTP based services. It processes the information/data between two applications and returns the data in XML or JSON format. API can be accessed by a broad range of clients like browsers, mobile, IOT, desktop application etc.

Web API can be build using different technologies .net, java, Python, Ruby etc.

Web API features & Advantages :

1. Web API is an ideal platform for building RESTful services.

2. Can develop cross domain application.

3. Web API has lightweight architecture and easy to use.

4. It has the ability to be hosted in IIS as well as self-host outside of IIS.

5. It supports full features of HTTP verbs like Get, Put, Post and Delete for all CRUD operations.

6. Supports different formats of response data like XML, JSON etc. using MediaTypeFormatter.

7. Support for OData

8. Support for routing