WCF Services or Web API ?

Devara

I have a project which I want to start from scratch can anyone help me with the suggestion that

I have only two options to go with

1.WCF

2.API

Suggest me with best approach

Thanks in Advance!

4 Replies

Know the answer? Post it — somebody with the same question will find it here.

Actually its depends upon your requirement.

Following is a quick checklist to help to determine whether to use WCF or Web API

Scenario	WCF 4.5	ASP.NET Web API
Requires support for scenarios like Message queues, end to end message security, duplex communication, distributed transactions, etc.	Select	Do NOT Select
When you already have existing working WCF services and Wants to add HTTP support additionally.	Select	Do NOT Select
One codebase to provide support both SOAP and RESTful endpoints.	Select	Do NOT Select
Wants to create a resource-oriented service over HTTP.	Do NOT Select	Select
Your project is an MVC application and wants some functionality over HTTP.	Do NOT Select	Select
You want to build only an HTTP / RESTful services	Do NOT Select	Select

Reference: https://www.guru99.com/wcf-web-api-difference.html

Hi,

Before starting the project please understand the requirements you want to address.

WCF vs Web API are based on:

The following table describes the major features of each technology.

CHOOSING WHICH TECHNOLOGY TO USE
WCF	ASP.NET Web API
Enables building services that support multiple transport protocols (HTTP, TCP, UDP, and custom transports) and allows switching between them.	HTTP only. First-class programming model for HTTP. More suitable for access from various browsers, mobile devices etc enabling wide reach.
Enables building services that support multiple encodings (Text, MTOM, and Binary) of the same message type and allows switching between them.	Enables building Web APIs that support wide variety of media types including XML, JSON etc.
Supports building services with WS-* standards like Reliable Messaging, Transactions, Message Security.	Uses basic protocol and formats such as HTTP, WebSockets, SSL, JSON, and XML. There is no support for higher level protocols such as Reliable Messaging or Transactions.
Supports Request-Reply, One Way, and Duplex message exchange patterns.	HTTP is request/response but additional patterns can be supported through SignalR and WebSockets integration.
WCF SOAP services can be described in WSDL allowing automated tools to generate client proxies even for services with complex schemas.	There is a variety of ways to describe a Web API ranging from auto-generated HTML help page describing snippets to structured metadata for OData integrated APIs.
Ships with the .NET Framework.	Ships with .NET Framework but is open-source and is also available out-of-band as independent download.

Source: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/framework/wcf/wcf-and-aspnet-web-api

Ajit Kulageri6y ago
The ASP.NET Web API is a framework that makes it easy to build HTTP services that reach a broad range of clients, including browsers and mobile devices. The ASP.NET Web API is an ideal platform for building Restful applications on the .NET Framework.

https://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/4d9083/how-to-create-web-api-in-Asp-Net-mvc/#:~:text=The%20ASP.NET%20Web%20API%20is%20a%20framework%20that,applications%20on%20the%20.NET%20Framework.%20Referred%20from%20%E2%80%9CMicrosoft.com%E2%80%9D.