Web Form Web Api Application Project Template

ASP.NET Web Forms Web API Project Template

With ASP.NET MVC 4 one of the most exciting feature release was Web API. ASP.NET Web API is a framework that makes it easy to build HTTP services that reach a broad range of clients, including browsers and mobile devices. ASP.NET Web API is an ideal platform for building RESTful applications on the .NET Framework.

In order to create Web API, one needed to select the ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Application Proejct Template and then we will get an option to create a Web API. This is a little confusion that the tooling provides in my opinion. If you wanted to create Web API's in Web Forms project you could but it was through Add New Item feature of Visual Studio. In order to make it easy i have created this template.

ASP.NET Web Forms Web API Project Template creates a Web Forms project and provides all the infrasturcture required for creating a Web API within Web Forms project. This project template creates a folder named "Api" and adds a dummy API named "ValuesController".

This project template also creates the Web API Help feature that was released by ASP.NET dev team for MVC and makes it available within Web Forms project. In order to create Web Forms with Web API project, performs the following steps:

1. Open Visual Studio 2012
2. Click File > New Project > Visual C#. 
3. Select "ASP.NET Web Forms Web Api Application" template

Once the project is created

• Naviagte to http://localhost:<port>/api/Values to ping the web api. 
• Navigate to http://localhost:<port>/Help/Index to get to the Web API Help page

This works for .NET 4.5 version and Visual C# language only.