ASP.NET Web API has been one of my favorite recent additions to ASP.NET. Whether you prefer a RESTful approach or something more RPC-oriented, Web API will do just about anything you need. Even if you’re still using ASP.NET WebForms, Web API still has you covered – a nice example of the “One ASP.NET” philosophy that’s finally beginning to come together.

However, ASP.NET Web API throws an unintuitive curveball at you when you want to accept simple primitive types as parameters to POST methods. Figuring this issue out is particularly confusing because it’s one of the rare parts of Web API that violates the principle of least astonishment.

Because of that, using jQuery to interact with those methods requires a slight contortion that seems strange at first, but makes sense once you understand why it’s necessary. In this post, I’ll briefly describe the underlying issue and show you how jQuery can be convinced to work around the issue.
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I’ve been receiving lots of emails asking my opinion about ASP.NET Web API lately. One of the most recent messages boiled them all down pretty well in its subject line:

ASP.NET Web API – Why is it so cool?

That’s a great question.

Too many of the answers to that question come down to subjective, personal preference. Worse, you’ll often hear that it’s what you should use simply because it’s the new thing Microsoft is pushing (you know, like WCF once was). If you’re already making good use of ASP.NET MVC’s controller actions as a makeshift API, just hearing that Web API is “better” might not be all that compelling.

However, I think Web API objectively wins out over MVC controller APIs in a few key areas. In this post, I’ll cover why these three aspects of ASP.NET Web API make it a clear choice for my ASP.NET-based APIs going forward:

• Content negotiation
• Flexibility
• Separation of concerns

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It’s probably an understatement to say that ASP.NET Web API has sparked a bit of debate about RESTful design lately.

Web API’s new features like content negotiation, flexible media formatters, and improved JSON formatter are great, but they’ve been presented as features that are tied to the REST paradigm. That may seem troubling if you’re more accustomed to .NET’s RPC endpoints like ASMX, WCF, and even the way ASP.NET MVC controller actions are often used as a makeshift API.

A couple months after the new incarnation of Web API was announced, I’m still seeing a lot of confusion and unhappiness about Web API’s apparent push toward REST. However, what almost everyone has overlooked so far is that Web API supports RPC just as well as REST.

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