What web service framework to choose for .NET

2
votes

We have a Silverlight application which consumes existing WCF Ria service. Now we are going to write new front-end application using HTML/JavaScript. Obviously, WCF Ria Services is not the best option to consume by JavaScript client, that's why we need to decide what to choose. I'm looking at ASP.NET Web API, OData and ServiceStack. Personally, I like the transparency of ServiceStack but OData supports many useful features out-of-the-box. Framework of my dream does the following:

  • Handles different serialization formats.
  • Plays nicely with others (there should not be a problem to consume service from non-ms-tenchnologies-based application).
  • Allows to filter data like OData $filter but not particularly using its syntax, any other would be acceptable.
  • Allows to expand object navigational properties like OData $expand.
  • Implements RESTful services with clean URIs and correct HTTP methods mapping.

Can I achieve those with ServiceStack? Or maybe some other framework not mentioned here?

Update

  • For navigational properties expanding (or hiding) one may refer to this answer
  • For query serialization see linq2rest project
1
web-servicesasp.net-web-apiodataservicestackwcf-ria-services

1 Answers

1
votes

ServiceStack vehemently opposes opaque technologies like OData.

Amongst other things, once you expose a query language you've lost control over the query-space your clients have binded to and will have effectively lost confidence in what will be a breaking change, freezing your underlying db schema's in-place. This goes against having a well-defined service boundary in the first place.

In situations that warrants exposing adhoc querying, I'd rather use explicit fields that map to some reflection and a configurable/overridable query-builder so I retain complete control.

Querying example with ServiceStack using de-coupled from DTO's

Although there are query-based solutions being used with ServiceStack, like this rich Northwind data browser as an example, which comes with a detailed explanation explaining the approach used. I consider this a better approach than OData since the LLBGen data models are decoupled and manageable separate from ServiceStack DTOs.