Chapter 1. Getting Started with the ASP.NET Web API

ASP.NET Web API is a framework for building HTTP Services. It is part of the ASP.NET platform, which is a free web framework for building websites and services.

Microsoft Azure makes building web services extremely easy. It provides the backbone for hosting scalable Web APIs and then efficiently managing and monitoring them.

In this chapter, we get to know the ASP.NET Web API framework. We delve into the fundamentals of the components that encompass the ASP.NET Web API, walk through the request-response pipeline of ASP.NET Web API, and also talk about the main features provided by the framework that make development of ASP.NET Web API a breeze. We then begin with the essential step of creating our first ASP.NET Web API and then deploy it in Microsoft Azure.