WCF vs ASP .Net Web API

Question

What are the pros and cons of using each technology?

WCF Web Api is now merged into Asp.net Asp.net web api now supports self hosting.

I still imagine if I want to expose multiple protocol schemas for the same operation I would still lean towards WCF or can Mvc end point do this too?

Also does the new Asp.Net web api expose Wsdl? If not how would the client figure out what operation is available to them?

Arguably the best feature of Mvc is the modelbinder. How robust is the WCF equivalent?

So can someone tell me what advantage does the Asp.net web api bring to the table? WCF seems overwhelmingly the more powerful/scalable choice, imo. About the only thing the Mvc Web Api has over the WCF model is probably ease of development, but that means squat if it ends up being a serious design limitation down the road.

Answer 1

First, I suggest you read my post on the subject: http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/idof/archive/2012/03/05/wcf-or-asp-net-web-apis-my-two-cents-on-the-subject.aspx

Regarding your WSDL question - since the WebApi does not use SOAP, it does not require a WSDL, and does not export one. You can use Hypermedia to return resources with a list of possible activity URLs (think of it as a self-describing resource)

Answer 2

The choice depends on what we want to do.

1. ASP.NET Web API is a framework for building non-SOAP based services over HTTP only - so there aren't more transport protocols available using this framework.
2. WCF / Windows Communication Foundation is a framework for exchanging SOAP-based messages - here we use a lot of transport protocols: HTTP, TCP, Named pipes, MSMQ, etc...

I am not sure about which one has better performance regarding the amount of data, maybe WCF since we can use low protocols. Any comments are appreciated.