Standalone async web API on Mono

Question

Has anybody had success (production code) with hosting a standalone async web API (asp.net web API) based service on Mono? By standalone I mean hosting the API in a console app outside of asp.net.

I am looking for a simple way to create a REST API and I would really really like to make my stack async (C#5 style) from the top HTTP layer to the bottom data access layer, now that C#5 has such good support for it.

Normally I would go with ServiceStack and host this as a daemon on Linux, but because ServiceStack does not support the new C#5 async stuff in their services (as far as I know), I am considering using a self-hosted async web API on Mono.

I know that there is some async branch on the way in ServiceStack, but it is not ready, and I know that there are some asynconeway things in ServiceStack, but I don't think this is using the new task based async stuff in C#5.

So my question is whether it is possible and stable enough to make a REST service using a self-hosted async web API on mono, or if it is better just to use synchronous ServiceStack when doing standalone hosting on Mono?

Answer 1

Better use async NancyFx. Web API is not well supported on Mono (yet). With Nancy, you would do like:

public Module()
{
    Get["/greet/{name}"] = async x => {
        await Task.Delay(5000);
        return string.Concat("Hello ", x.name);
    };
}

Answer 2

Not exactly standalone application, but check this tutorial on Running ASP.NET Web API services under Linux and OS X It shows how to run ASP.net Web API from UNIX based OSs.