Web API as a windows service

Question

So I'm creating a new .Net Framework 4.8 Web API in Visual Studio 2019 and I'm wanting to know how to create the API as a windows service? I can't seem to find any examples or online resources to do so. I can run the API locally in VS and it opens Chrome and shows the responses under the local IIS Server it spins up. How do I take this same project and compile it as a windows service while still using HTTPS?

Answer 1

Web API is fully capable of being self hosted on top of OWIN, and does not require IIS to run.

Web API self hosted is basically just a console app. So the techniques for turning a Web API console app into a Windows Service are the same as for any other .NET console app. You can use a service manager such as NSSM, or create a Windows service project directly (by inheriting from the appropriate classes, pretty messy) or use a library like TopShelf.

Note that it's generally not a good idea to directly expose this self hosted app directly to the public. IIS provides a lot of security benefits out of the box designed to protect against malicious requests. If you're planning to publicly expose it, make sure you stick a proxy in front of it that will fulfill those security needs.