Category Archives: asp.net mvc

November, 2012

8th

7 comments

Adding Session support to ASP.NET Web API

Because you might need it one day

First the disclaimer. Yes, there are a lot of problems with using session in your ASP.NET applications. Moreover, by default, HTTP (and by extension, REST) is stateless – and as a result each HTTP request should carry enough information by itself for its recipient to process it to be in complete harmony with the stateless nature of HTTP.

So if you are designing a proper API, if you are a REST purist, or if you are Darrel Miller, you definitely do not want to continue reading this article. But if not, and you find yourself in a scenario requiring session – perhaps you are using Web API to facilitate your JS or MVC application, and you want to sync the state of Web API with the state of MVC easily, or you simply want a quick and easy way to persist state on the server side – this article is for you.

More after the jump.

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August, 2012

23rd

29 comments

Supporting OData $inlinecount with the new Web API OData preview package

Because OData is super useful

OData support in Web API is arguably one of its hottest features. However, it’s support in Web API has been a bumpy ride – initially, OData was supported in a limited way only, and ultimately ended up being yanked altogether from the Web API RTM. It is however stil lpossible to use OData with Web API, only in a slighly different form , as an external NuGet package, which, in its pre-release alpha format was published last Wednesday, along the Web API RTM release.

This package is called Microsoft ASP.NET Web API OData and is a joint effort by Microsoft’s Web API and OData teams. Alex James has written a great introduction to the package, so I recommend reading it.

In the meantime, let me show you how to add $inlinecount support as for the time being, it’s still not provided there out of the box.

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15th

10 comments

ASP.NET Web API is released! What’s new in Web API RTM and how to use it!

And why is it good for you

If you have been following this blog for a while now (and if not, I really hope you will!), you’d know that I am a big fan of Web API. I have been blogging a lot about Web API, through its beta, RC stages and even about features that were only available through the Codeplex builds and I have to say that it is a terrific bridge between CLR and HTTP and fits really nicely into the existing landspace of web technologies.

With that said, today is a really big and important day, as Web API has been publicly released in its RTM version. This effectively means that you have binaries you can safely use in production scenarios and take advantage of all the great features of the framework. You can download MVC4 (including Web API) RTM here.

Let’s go through the new features in RTM.

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12th

23 comments

Testing routes in ASP.NET Web API

Because it can be really helpful

The question that often comes up when talking to developers and clients about Web API solutions is how exactly should you go about testing your route configuration in Web API? Some would perhaps argue that in certain cases, especially if you stick to RESTful approach, this type of testing wouldn’t even be necessary, because the convention over configuration provided by the framework means that you effecitvely end up testing something that’s internal working of Web API.

With that said, especially when you have complex routes, or when you break the Restful approach and provide RPC-style API, or if you have your API actions decorated with HTTP verbs that don’t match the action names, you probably want to (and probably should, if you ask me) test the API routing to make sure certain requests end up in proper places.

Let’s deal with this interesting problem.

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1st

21 comments

Adding OpenID authentication to your ASP.NET MVC 4 application

Because it's easy and convenient

I am currently working on an MVC4 project that allows users to authenticate through OpenID. I don’t think I need to convince anyone about the benefits for both parties that come with that. Users don’t have to register at your site, and you have less of those tedious account maintance tasks.

Although it’s apparently coming later on as a built-in feature into the Visual Studio templates (Damien Edwards showed that stuff for Web Forms during aspConf), let me show how you can very quickly add simple OpenID support to your MVC4 application.

More after the jump.

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July, 2012

15th

14 comments

Everything you want to know about ASP.NET Web API content negotiation

Web API Content negotiation demystified

One of the key concepts in ASP.NET Web API, lying pretty much at the heart of it, is content negotiation – or simply conneg. I really believe that, before you start developing Web API solutions, you need to understand conneg well.

I thought it would be interesting to try to explain content negotiation in detail – what it is, what it does, and why it does that, especially as I have seen a lot of questions, misconceptions and misunderstandings around it on various boards or question sites.

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June, 2012

25th

17 comments

Using NLog to provide custom tracing for your ASP.NET Web API

Cause everything in Web API is pluggable

One of the things I love most about MVC3, and now ASP.NET Web API, is that pretty much any functionality or service that is used by your application, can be replaced with a custom one. One of these is the entire tracing mechanism that Web API uses.

Let’s have a look today at how you can build a simple System.Web.Http.Tracing.ITraceWriter implementation to provide support for a custom logging framework in your Web API – in our case it will be NLog.

More after the jump.

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12th

25 comments

ASP.NET Web API integration testing with in-memory hosting

Because lightweight in-memory server is what the doctor ordered

In-memory hosting is one of the hidden gems of ASP.NET Web API. While the community, forums, bloggers have been buzzing about web-host and self-host capabilities of Web API, aside from the terrific post by Pedro Felix, very little has been said about in memory hosting.

Let me show you an example today, how a lightweight Web API server can be temporarily established in memory (without elevated priviliges, or cannibalizing ports like self host) and used to perform integration testing, allowing you to test almost the entire pipeline, from the request to the response.

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8th

17 comments

Control the execution order of your filters in ASP.NET Web API

Because attributes no longer have to run unordered

One of the few minor annoyances in ASP.NET Web API is that you lack the ability to control the order in which the attributes/filters are executed. If you have several of those applied to one action, they wil not run in the order they have been declared in the code, and that sometimes may cause a lot of problems.

In fact, it has even been submitted as an issue to the ASP.NET team on Codeplex. In the meantime, let’s tackle this problem and see how you can easily regain control over the execution order of the attributes.

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3rd

17 comments

Extending your ASP.NET Web API responses with useful metadata

Because heplpful information make it easier for the client

If you ever worked with any API, which, in this day of age, you must have, you surely noticed that in most situations the API response isn’t just the result (requested data), but also a set of helpful metadata, like “total Results”, “timestamp”, “status” and so on.

In Web API, by default, you just serialize your models (or DTO) and such information are not present. Let’s build something which will solve this problem and help you decorate your response with hepful information. This would make it very easy for the client to implement paging, auto-loading scenarios, caching (if you return last modified information) and a lot more.

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