ASP.Net MVC4 WebApi proxy

Question

I am starting to play with WebApi and Rest services. Till now I was always developing SOAP APIs.

My Question is there something parallel to proxy in MVC4 WebApi or it's only SOAP world concept. If not how the clients know the full description of the Web functions that I expose to them.

Thanks

Answer 1

I suppose you mean the WSDL service description, which does not exist in WebAPI as such. Now I see you also added the tag REST to the question and I would like to stress that the WebAPI does not enforce REST practices.

REST is in the middle of some discussion lately, but I would think everyone agrees it does not define any wsdl-like service.

It does however require you to make your documents self-describing and encourages publishing possible state transfers and links to related documents more info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HATEOAS

REST is a very different beast than SOAP because it actually does not want you to send commands to and from the server other than the basic ones needed to get/update/.. resources, but a full description of this is beyond the scope of this post :-)

That being said, the webAPI technology in itself does not have any reservations in that regard and it would be perfectly possible to put full-blown services and a related wsdl like structure in place.