RESTful .NET

Chapter 4. Programming Read/Write Services

In the previous chapter, you were introduced to the WCF 3.5 web programming model and the major pieces of its infrastructure. You used the programming model to write a read-only RESTful service, and used the infrastructure to deploy and expose it.

While it could be that some of the services you build will be read-only, it is more likely that your services will include other parts of the uniform interface in addition to GET. In this chapter, I’ll show you how to put the WCF 3.5 web programming model to work in building a read/write service that allows user agents to create, modify, and delete resources.

POST, PUT, and DELETE

Chapter 1 discussed REST and the architectural constraints of the uniform interface. See Figure 4-1 to refresh your memory about the uniform interface and how it should work.

Figure 4-1. REST uniform interface

Recall from Chapter 3 that WCF enables a RESTful programming model by allowing annotation on methods via attributes. These attributes specify which method should be invoked for each URI, and which part of the uniform interface each method implements. For example, WebGetAttribute will implement GET, and its UriTemplate property value specifies the URI to which the method will respond.

All other verbs in the uniform interface (POST, PUT, and DELETE) are implemented using the WebInvokeAttribute. WebInvokeAttribute also allows ...