ASP.NET MVC 4 and the Web API: Building a REST Service from Start to Finish, by Jamie Kurtz

ASP.NET MVC 4 and the Web API, by Jamie Kurtz, is the one of the new breed of technical books that read like a blog entry, albeit a very long one. The book is merely 100 pages long, but to the point, with links to code on GitHub and references to other resources for details that are not the subject of the book. The principles behind the architecture are discussed, explained, the machine setup is described, the configuration, then bam! all the pieces fit together. Even if I don't agree fully with some of Kurtz's recommendations, I have to admit this is probably a very very useful book.

What is it about? It describes how to create a REST web API, complete with authentication, authorization, logging and unit testing. It discusses ORM (with OData), DI, Source control, the basics of REST and MVC, and all other tools required. But what I believe to be the strength of the approach in the book is the clear separation of modules. One can easily find fault with one of the pieces recommended by the author and just as easily replace only that component, leaving the others as is.

The structure of the book is as follows:

• Chapter 1 - A quick introduction of ASP.Net MVC4 as a platform for REST services, via the Web API.
• Chapter 2 - The basics of REST services. There are very subtle points described there, including the correct HTTP codes and headers in the response and discoverability. It also points to prerequisites of your API in order to be called REST, like the REST Maturity Model.
• Chapter 3 - Modelling of an API. This includes the way URLs are formed, the conventions in use and how the API should look to the client.
• Chapter 4 - The scaffolding of your Visual Studio project, the logging configuration, the folder structure, the API DTOs.
• Chapter 5 - Putting components together: configuring NInject, designing your classes with DI and testability in mind.
• Chapter 6 - Security: really simple implementation with a lot of power provided by the default Microsoft Membership Providers.
• Chapter 7 - Actually building the API, making some smoke tests, seeing it all work.

The complete source of the project described in the book can be found on GitHub.

My personal opinion of the setup is that, while all seems to fit together, some technologies are a bit over the top. NInject, I had personal experience with it, is very good, but very slow. The ASP.Net Membership scheme is very verbose. While I wouldn't really care about it as implemented in the book, I still cringe at the table names and zillions of columns. Also, I am slightly opposed to ORMs, mostly because they attempt to mould you into a specific frame of thinking, that of CRUD, making any optimization or deviation from the plan rather difficult. I've had the experience of working on a project that had all of its database access in stored procedures. To find what accessed a table and a column was a breeze, without knowing anything about the underlying implementation. But even so, as I was saying above, the fact that the author separates concerns so beautifully makes any component replaceable.

I highly recommend this book, especially now, when the world moves toward HTML and Javascript interfaces built on web APIs.