ASP.NET Web API, Web Services Discovery, and Client Creation

Question

I cannot find anything in the service discovery implementation for ASP.NET Web APIs. For a new project, I need to make a decision between WCF and Web API. The service element will be consumed by various clients, mobile, client-side JavaScript, and the ASP.NET website.

For the site, the convenience of creating a client against the WCF service is obviously a plus. I am not familiar with RESTful web services, but I see that there is a Web Application Description Language (WADL). Perhaps this is my ignorance, but, of course, it’s good that you can advertise the right way to consume your service?

My main question is: is there anything that generates WADL or similar for the WEB API?

Secondary question: does this tool look like it creates a client based on WADL, is there anything else that makes life easier for the client to be updated using a RESTful web service?

Answer 1

There is a lot of work. This is not finished, but look at the space.

Looking here (and newer posts by Yao): http://blogs.msdn.com/b/yaohuang1/archive/2012/05/21/asp-net-web-api-generating-a-web-api-help- page-using-apiexplorer.aspx

Also

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/yaohuang1/archive/2012/06/15/using-apiexplorer-to-export-api-information-to-postman-a-chrome-extension-for-testing-web- apis.aspx

Answer 2

I wrote a way to create WADL using the ASP.NET Web API here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/stuartleeks/archive/2014/05/20/teaching-asp-net-web-api-to-wadl. aspx