How to create web api methods? - json

Question

Hi I am developing one restfull wep api application. I am new to the world of web api and little confused about http verbs. My tasks is to write services using web api2. I have one table in sql server and i am trying to do basic crud operation around this table. I want to send data in json format and return data as json. For example http://localhost:26079/api/User_Creation/1 returns data in json format as expected. My task is to host above method in iis so that anyone can access that method to retrieve data. I am confused suppose if i want to insert some data to db then what would be the method? I have below code in controllera and i am able to insert data.
public void Post(Noor_Users users)
{
if (ModelState.IsValid)
{
entityObject.Noor_Users.Add(users);
int result = entityObject.SaveChanges();
}
}
When i insert data my url will be http://localhost:26079/ but how can i expose my insert data method to outside world? My requirement is as follows.
URL:/user_creation
method:post
Request:parameters such as fname,lname as json
Response:0 for success 1 for failure and data(unique id assigned to each user)
may i get some help on this? Thank for consideration.

Answer 1

When considering REST it is important to understand and design it as you are taking actions against a resource at the location, and not like making a remote function call.
So I would suggest to have API as -
http://localhost:26079/api/User
instead of - http://localhost:26079/api/User_Creation
In order to adhere to REST principals.
Doing this I am very clearly stating that the user of the api will be able to perform operations on the resource (which is a User in this case) using different verbs viz. GET, POST, PUT and DELETE.
See some examples on using the API -
If I need to get a user with Id 1, I would call api like, http://localhost:26079/api/User/1 with GET request
To create a new user, I would call, http://localhost:26079/api/User with POST request and send the user information in request body
To delete a user with id 1, I would call http://localhost:26079/api/User/1 with Delete request
To update a user data with Id 1, call http://localhost:26079/api/User/1 with PUT request and send the updated user information in request body
Please note here that we are using just a single endpoint to perform different operations on our User by changing different HTTP verbs.
The default asp.net web api template gives some good hint on how to declare different verb methods e.g. -
public class UserController : ApiController
{
// GET api/<controller>/1
public User Get(int id)
{
}
// POST api/<controller>
public void Post([FromBody]User user)
{
}
// PUT api/<controller>/1
public void Put(int id, [FromBody]User user)
{
}
// DELETE api/<controller>/1
public void Delete(int id)
{
}
}
There is some good information here and here on designing restful api.

Answer 2

If you want to call your emthod from Angular, you can just use $http.post() method:
$http.post('/someUrl', data, config).then(successCallback, errorCallback);
Here you can find more information.