HTTP, REST, and Hypermedia
Before speaking about ASP.NET Web API itself, we need to provide some fundamentals to get a better understanding of why ASP.NET Web API works as it does. The very basic goal of ASP.NET Web API was to make HTTP a first-class citizen in .NET and provide a foundation for RESTful applications based on the .NET Framework. So in order to understand the Web API framework better, we will explain the fundamentals of HTTP, REST and hypermedia, starting with HTTP basics.
As just mentioned, ASP.NET Web API primarily is about handling the HTTP protocol in an efficient and fluent manner using .NET, so we need ...