Getting started with .NET Core Web API

Web API is the preferred way of developing REST apis in .NET core

Create a web api template using .NET Core cli command

dotnet new webapi <apiName>

Susbstitute the api name in place of <apiName>

Default template gets created

Web api contains the Controller (which is synonymous with the Controller in MVC pattern). By default a sample WeatherForecastController is created with GET method.

We can observe that the Controller inherits from ControllerBase interface and it has attribute ApiController. Route attribute contains the [controller] placeholder which means the route path container the name of controller i.e. WeatherForecast

Run the Web api using dotnet cli command

dotnet run 

Web api is built and run. Api is hosted at http://localhost:5000 and https://localhost:5001

Launch the following URL

http://localhost:5000/WeatherForecast

The Json data from WeatherController is returned.

Web API supports JSON and XML serialization for returning data. The default serialization is JSON.