ASP.NET Core in Action, Second Edition

9 Creating a Web API for mobile and client applications using MVC

This chapter covers

• Creating a Web API controller to return JSON to clients
• Using attribute routing to customize your URLs
• Generating a response using content negotiation
• Applying common conventions with the [ApiController] attribute

In the previous five chapters, you’ve worked through each layer of a server-side rendered ASP.NET Core application, using Razor Pages to render HTML to the browser. In this chapter you’ll see a different take on an ASP.NET Core application. Instead of using Razor Pages, we’ll explore Web APIs, which serve as the backend for client-side SPAs and mobile apps.

You can apply much of what you’ve already learned to Web APIs; they use the same MVC design ...