Differences between Web API and MVC

In this article, we will see what is Web API & MVC, their features & components, along with knowing their advantages & disadvantages, finally, will see the difference between them.

The Model View Controller (MVC) is part of an architecture pattern that separates the application into 3 major Logical components that consist of a data model that contains only the pure application data, without containing any logic that describes how to present the data to a user. The Presentation(view) signifies the model’s data to the user. The view knows how to access the model’s data, but it does not know what this data means or what the user can do to manipulate it. The final part is the controller that exists between the view and the model. It listens to events triggered by the view (or another external source) and executes the appropriate reaction to these events. In most cases, the reaction is to call a method on the model. It is basically responsible for managing the query string values and transferring the result values to the models. 

Features of MVC

• Helps in separating business logic from UI logic, enhancing code organization.
• Utilizes JsonResult to return data in JSON format.
• Provides powerful URL-mapping capabilities for building clean and searchable URLs.

Advantages of using MVC

• Facilitates organization in large-scale web applications.
• Speeds up the development process.
• Improves planning and maintenance.
• Supports test-driven development (TDD).
• Allows returning data without formatting.

Disadvantages of using MVC

• MVC is not suitable for small applications.
• If the model keeps on going with frequent changes then the views could be overburdened sometimes with update requests.
• Implementing MVC sometimes requires deep technical knowledge.

MVC is used for Web application development. MVC returns both data and view of the data whereas, Web API returns only the HTTP services data i.e. only in form of data.

NOTE : Web APIs are the services for any type of devices and any clients but MVC provides service only to it's clients.

The Web API is an API that can be accessed over the web using the HTTP protocol, i.e., it is basically a framework that facilitates us to create and develop HTTP-based RESTFUL services. Technologies such as java, ASP.NET, etc. can be utilized to develop the web API, which can be used in either a web server or a web browser. Web APIs does not include web browser since web development concepts strictly adhere to the Client-side (including Frameworks). Being open-source, Web APIs generally offer lower bandwidth which facilitates passing not only  JSON /XML but also HTML. They offer centralization of Business Logic which helps in maintaining consistency across all the layers.

Components of Web API

• Model: In WebAPI, models are objects that are used to retrieve and store the model state in the database. 
• Component Negotiation: Content negotiation is performed at the server-side to determine the media type formatted (i.e. whether it is a JSON or XML or another file) to be used based to return the response for an incoming request from the client-side

Features of Web APIs

• Helps in developing HTTP services (both RESTful and non-RESTful services) that process the request and return the data.
• Web APIs return data in  JSON, XML, or other formats.
• System.Web.Http assembly has all the features defined by Web APIs.

Advantages of using Web API

• Lightweight architecture, along with having support for Routing.
• Supports both model binding and data validation
• We can perform HTTP terminologies like GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE for all CRUD operations
• We can generate JSON and XML responses.

Disadvantages of using Web API

• It is a bit costlier & expensive for use.
• Only JSON and XML are present in Web API unlike MVC where return views, action results, etc are present

Difference Between MVC and Web APIs