WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) - One of the choices available in .NET for creating RESTful services is WCF. The problem with WCF is that, a lot of configuration is required to turn a WCF service into a RESTful service. The more natural choice for creating RESTful services is ASP.NET Web API, which is specifically created for this purpose.
WCF is more suited for building services that are transport/protocol independent. For example, you want to build a single service, that can be consumed by 2 different clients - Let's say, a Java client and .NET client. Java client expects transport protocol to be HTTP and message format to be XML for interoperability, where as the .NET client expects the protocol to be TCP and the message format to be binary for performance. For this scenario WCF is the right choice. What we do here is create a single WCF service, and then configure 2 end points one for each client (i.e one for the Java client and the other for the .NET client). If you are new to WCF, please watch our WCF video series. I will have the link available in the description of this video.
There is nothing wrong to use WCF to create RESTful services. It's just that it's a bit more complex and configuration can be a headache. If you are stuck with .NET 3.5 or you have an existing SOAP service you must support but want to add REST to reach more clients, then use WCF.
If you don't have the limitation of .NET 3.5 and you want to a create brand new restful service then use ASP.NET Web API.
In our upcoming videos in this series, we will discuss creating RESTful services from scratch using ASP.NET Web API framework.
WCF is more suited for building services that are transport/protocol independent. For example, you want to build a single service, that can be consumed by 2 different clients - Let's say, a Java client and .NET client. Java client expects transport protocol to be HTTP and message format to be XML for interoperability, where as the .NET client expects the protocol to be TCP and the message format to be binary for performance. For this scenario WCF is the right choice. What we do here is create a single WCF service, and then configure 2 end points one for each client (i.e one for the Java client and the other for the .NET client). If you are new to WCF, please watch our WCF video series. I will have the link available in the description of this video.
There is nothing wrong to use WCF to create RESTful services. It's just that it's a bit more complex and configuration can be a headache. If you are stuck with .NET 3.5 or you have an existing SOAP service you must support but want to add REST to reach more clients, then use WCF.
If you don't have the limitation of .NET 3.5 and you want to a create brand new restful service then use ASP.NET Web API.
In our upcoming videos in this series, we will discuss creating RESTful services from scratch using ASP.NET Web API framework.
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