Preface

Writing web APIs is one of most sought-after programming skills as it provides lightweight HTTP services that reach a broad range of clients. A well-designed web API can be used by various clients such as Desktop, web, and mobile apps; as its HTTP services, it can be used across cross-platform.
ASP.NET Web API 2 is an ideal platform to build REST-based APIs, and it's widely adopted and has been very successful. Microsoft entered the world of open source by introducing cross-platform.NET Core and cross-platform ASP.NET Core technologies.
ASP.NET Core opened a new world of exciting, feature-rich, and lightweight way of developing web applications. With this new technology, we are not confined to the world of Windows OS to build applications. It's truly cross-platform because we don't have to use Visual Studio IDE to develop applications anymore.
ASP.NET Core provides a very innovating approach to build web APIs. In this book, you will learn about the ASP.NET Core anatomy, creating web APIs by exploring the concept of middleware, integrating with databases, applying various security mechanisms, and consuming them in popular web UI frameworks.
This book is written considering both experienced and new developers. A prior knowledge of developing web APIs will be an added advantage, but it's not a prerequisite. It will help you build a truly cross-platform ASP.NET Core Web API and master it. We are using .NET Core 2.0 Preview 2 and ASP.NET Core 2.0 Preview 2, along with Visual Studio 2017 Preview 3 at the time of writing this book, and we do plan to update this book for the final release of ASP.NET Core 2.0.