ASP.Net Web API与WCF - Web API是否可用于为单例WCF服务提供基于REST的通信？

Question

I have an existing set of singleton WCF services. They are long-running processes that do a lot of work on an ongoing basis and expose themselves with WCF service contracts for communication with other processes.

When the WCF Web API was being developed I was excited because it was looking like I'd finally be able to do away with all of the annoying contract stuff and simply provide a platform-agnostic REST API for each service and have the processes communicate via HTTP requests and JSON responses.

Now it looks like the Web API has become an IIS-hosted ASP.Net feature, leaving me trying to figure out if I'm just missing something or if my WCF services will no longer have the opportunity to provide a REST interface.

If the Web API is no longer really targeted at my scenario, what has the ASP.Net team envisioned with respect to non-terminating singleton processes that wish to provide an HTTP/JSON-based API to other consuming processes?

Answer 1

You do not have to host ASP.NET Web API services in IIS. There is an option called " Self Hosting " that will allow you to host your API services in another process (such as a Windows Service) if you would like. I imagine that your current architecture would work just fine as a self-hosted app.

Answer 2

You can self-host using ServiceHost as in this MSDN example . See related SO post . Essentially - IIS is not a requirement for WCF hosting.

If you are using webHttpBinding - you just need to create the WebServiceHost which extends from ServiceHost to support REST.