A QUICK
GUIDE
TO LEARN
ASP.NET
CORE
WEB API
Aram Tchekrekjian @AramT87
1 Introduction
ASP.NET Core Web API is the
major upgrade over ASP.NET
Web API
Can be easily deployed and
run under different platforms
Based on Modules to allow
extensibility through NuGet
Packages and custom
middleware
Dependency Injection is at
the core of the framework, so
no need to add DI libraries
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2 .NET Updates
.NET 7 is the latest major release of
.NET with a Standard Term Support
until May, 2024
.NET 6 is a Long Term Support release
and will remain supported until
November, 2024
All previous versions of .NET Core
starting from 1 until 5 are no longer
receiving updates or support
.NET Frameworks 4.6.1 and below are
no longer supported
.NET Framework 4.6.2 is supported
until Jan, 2027
.NET Frameworks 4.7 up until 4.8 will
remain supported until further notice
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ASP.NET Core
Web API
Components
&
Topics
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3
ASP.NET Core Web API
Components
Controllers Program.cs
Routing appsettings.json
Versioning Dependency
Injection
Middleware
Kestrel
Attributes
Filters
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4
Controllers & Routing
Controllers define the HTTP methods and
routing URLs (endpoints) that will be
exposed to the public (clients).
When a client sends an HTTP request to
our API, ASP.NET Core will map the
request with the specified route and
forward the request to the matching
controller
In ASP.NET Core Web API, Controllers
inherit from ControllerBase.
The ControllerBase has methods and
properties to help the developer handle
the HTTP requests/responses. For
example there are many methods that
wrap your response with a specific type
of http status, such as:
return Ok(productModel);
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Versioning 5
You can define multiple versions of the
same API or endpoints by introducing
the versioning prefix
Versioning is important to allow for
adding or modifying the API without
affecting the existing clients
You can use ApiVersion Attribute to
specify the version you are currently
working with
To use ApiVersion, you will have to
import the
Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.Versioning
NuGet Package
You can also map a specific action to
Api Version using the MapToApiVersion
Attribute
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Middleware 6
A piece of Software class or
component that can be injected
somewhere in the pipeline of the
ASP.NET Core application
The purpose to handle or process
request/response
Middleware can vary from predefined
ones like UseAuthentication() or
Obtained from NuGet like
UseSwagger()
Or custom built like a middleware
class to intercept the request and
check for ‘api-key’ header in the
request headers and authenticate the
client accordingly
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Attributes 7
Reusable decorations added to class,
method or property to validate data
before or after processing the request
In ASP.NET Core, you will be working with
different attributes mainly on Controller
level, such as [Route(“…”), [ApiController],
[HttpGet] and more
You can also build your own attribute by
creating a class and inheriting from
System.Attribute Class
Attributes can implement different
number of Filters to handle different tasks
A good example for an attribute is
ApiKeyAttribute, where you can use it on a
specific Controller to make it
authenticated via api-key header
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Filters 8
Filters are used to intercept the
processing pipeline, so you can run
some code before or after some stage in
the process
A good example is a filter exception to
handle and log exceptions globally in
your API project instead of adding try
catch blocks into every controller
When combined together, Attribute
allows filters to accept arguments.
In the ASP.NET filter pipeline, there are
5 types of filters:
Authorization Filters
Resource Filters
Action Filters
Exception Filters
Result Filters
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Program.cs 9
This is the entry point to your application,
from here your application (before it is
even an ASP.NET Core) starts.
It includes the initial setup for services
and configuration for your whole Web API
project.
In Program.cs class you will define an
instance of
WebApplication.CreateBuilder(args), from
which you will read the Services
Collection, Configuration and other
important components
Later you will build the WebApplication
and configure the different middleware to
be used in your pipeline
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appsettings.json 10
This is a JSON formatted file that
includes all the environment-based
settings and configurations that you
can use in ASP.NET Core Web API
appsettings.json file usually include
ConnectionStrings, AppSettings
Key,Value pairs like URLs to other
APIs and services, Logging
Configurations…etc.
Using the Options Pattern, the
appsettings content can be easily
accessed from different components
of your ASP.NET Core project
through strongly-typed class that
represent your appsettings structure,
this happens by injecting IOptions<>
into your different classes
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Dependency Injection 11
This is a key topic in ASP.NET Core
sitting at the core of the ASP.NET
Core framework
ASP.NET Core provides built-in
service container to handle all the
dependency registration
With a single line of code,
dependency can be easily defined in
program.cs using the different Add
Methods inside the
ServiceCollection found in the
WebApplicationBuilder's instance
Dependencies added into the
service collection can be defined by
3 types of lifetimes:
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Dependency Lifetimes 12
Transient
New instance of the dependency
would be created on each HTTP
request
Also a new instance would be
created upon each request for
dependency within the same
HTTP Request
No issues with thread safety
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Dependency Lifetimes 13
Scoped
Instance would be shared within
the same HTTP request
An instance is created upon the
initial request for a dependency
and any subsequent request for
a dependency would share the
same instance.
Good usage example for scoped
is the DbContext of Entity
Framework Core
No issues with thread safety
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Dependency Lifetimes 14
Singleton
Instance would be shared across
all the different HTTP requests
You can use Singleton to share
data across multiple HTTP
requests such as application-
level caching data
Thread-safety might be an issue
here since a Singleton can be
accessed from multiple HTTP
requests where each request
would be running under its own
thread(s)
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Kestrel 15
The default web server that comes
bundled with ASP.NET Core
Allows ASP.NET Core applications to
be deployed cross-platform
It is lightweight and much faster
than other web servers, since it
doesn't provide all the features of
other servers like hosting static files,
URL rewriting, compression...etc.
It must be run behind a reverse-
proxy server
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ASP.NET Core Web API 16
More Topics
Web API Security Localization
Exception Handling DTO &
AutoMapper
Logging
Fluent API
Entity Framework Validations
Core
Deployment
File Upload
Testing
Swagger OpenAPI
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Thank You
Follow me for more content
Aram Tchekrekjian
@AramT87
CodingSonata.com
