ASP.NET Web API <#= Proxy to T4 #>

One of the coolest new features of ASP.NET is Web API, which allows you to build powerful RESTful services exposed over HTTP. HTTP is not just for serving up web pages, but it provides a platform for building APIs that expose services and data. It is simple, flexible, and ubiquitous.

ASP.NET Web API is all about REST HTTP Services. Unlike Web Services, it does not expose an end-point for meta-data exchange. When consuming a HTTP Service, you will have to create your own client-side code that must serve as a proxy for interfacing with the API.

Like any other WCF junkie out there, I've been working with Windows Communication Foundation for quite some time now implementing Web Services. Not only is it flexible and extensible, but it offers inter-operability, multiple message patterns, transactions and  meta-data exchange etc.

The nice thing about WCF is meta-data exchange, which allows you to generate the client-side proxy-code, contracts and classes used for talking to the service. On the other hand, ASP.NET Web API is more light-weight, operates only via HTTP and is used more for serving CRUD-based operations. The latter, however, does not have functionality (yet) for exposing service meta-data. Until now...

SignalR: Build real-time, multi-user interactive web apps

Some History

A while back I was involved in developing an online-bidding app. This may not sound too exciting nor complicated, but because this kind of application was web-based, it introduced a whole new set of challenges.

One of the core requirements of this app was to be critically up-to-date with real-time results. As a user bids on something, the action needs to be broadcast to the rest of the players bidding. The main challenge was achieving this on the web.

A really handy "cheat-sheet" for Razor

I came across this cool syntax table that can come in quite handy when one is working with Razor in ASP.NET: