Hosting

In Chapter 1, Getting Started with the ASP.NET Web API, we discussed the concept of a Host Listener. It listens for incoming requests, transforms them into an appropriate HttpRequestMessage, and then sends it through the Web API MessageHandler pipeline. The plug and play model of a Host Listener in the ASP.Net Web API provides considerable flexibility in determining how we want to host our Web API. There are two broad categories to host a Web API:

Type

Description

Web or IIS hosting

Web hosting refers to using the legacy ASP.NET pipeline in IIS for hosting the Web API. The Microsoft.AspNet.WebApi.Host assembly contains the components to host a Web API using IIS. The HttpApplication object passes all Web API route requests to HttpControllerHandler. This handler is then used to process incoming Web API requests and transform them into HttpRequestMessage. The messages are then sent through the Message Handler chain of execution and finally to the controller to execute the appropriate...