In this article, we will see what is Web API & MVC, their features & components, along with knowing their advantages & disadvantages, finally, will see the difference between them.
The Model View Controller (MVC) is part of an architecture pattern that separates the application into 3 major Logical components that consist of a data model that contains only the pure application data, without containing any logic that describes how to present the data to a user. The Presentation(view) signifies the model’s data to the user. The view knows how to access the model’s data, but it does not know what this data means or what the user can do to manipulate it. The final part is the controller that exists between the view and the model. It listens to events triggered by the view (or another external source) and executes the appropriate reaction to these events. In most cases, the reaction is to call a method on the model. It is basically responsible for managing the query string values and transferring the result values to the models.
Features of MVC
- MVC is helpful in developing web applications that process request and sends both views and data. It helps to understand the business logic & Ul logic separately from each other.
- MVC represents resultant data in JSON format using JsonResult.
- System.web.MVC has all features defined by MVC.
- It is a powerful URL-mapping component that can be utilized to build applications that have comprehensible and searchable URLs.
Advantages of using MVC
- Helps in organizing Large scale web applications.
- The development process is made much faster.
- Ease of planning and better maintenance
- MVC returns data without formatting.
- It has extensive support for test-driven development.
Disadvantages of using MVC
- MVC is not suitable for small applications.
- If the model keeps on going with frequent changes then the views could be overburdened sometimes with update requests.
- Implementing MVC sometimes requires deep technical knowledge.
MVC is used for Web application development. MVC returns both data and view of the data whereas, Web API returns only the HTTP services data i.e. only in form of data.
NOTE : Web APIs are the services for any type of devices and any clients but MVC provides service only to it’s clients.
The Web API is an API that can be accessed over the web using the HTTP protocol, i.e., it is basically a framework that facilitates us to create and develop HTTP-based RESTFUL services. Technologies such as java, ASP.NET, etc. can be utilized to develop the web API, which can be used in either a web server or a web browser. Web APIs does not include web browser since web development concepts strictly adhere to the Client-side (including Frameworks). Being open-source, Web APIs generally offer lower bandwidth which facilitates passing not only JSON /XML but also HTML. They offer centralization of Business Logic which helps in maintaining consistency across all the layers.
Components of Web API
- Model: In WebAPI, models are objects that are used to retrieve and store the model state in the database.
- Component Negotiation: Content negotiation is performed at the server-side to determine the media type formatted (i.e. whether it is a JSON or XML or another file) to be used based to return the response for an incoming request from the client-side
Features of Web APIs
- Helps in developing HTTP services (both RESTful and non-RESTful services) that process the request and return the data.
- Web APIs return data in JSON, XML, or other formats.
- System.Web.Http assembly has all the features defined by Web APIs.
Advantages of using Web API
- Lightweight architecture, along with having support for Routing.
- Supports both model binding and data validation
- We can perform HTTP terminologies like GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE for all CRUD operations
- We can generate JSON and XML responses.
Disadvantages of using Web API
- It is a bit costlier & expensive for use.
- Only JSON and XML are present in Web API unlike MVC where return views, action results, etc are present
Difference between MVC & Web APIs
Model View Controller |
Web API |
|---|---|
|
MVC is used for developing Web applications that reply to both data and views |
Web API is used for generating HTTP services that reply only as data. |
|
When receiving the request, MVC performs tracing based on the action name. |
When receiving the request, Web API performs tracing based on HTTP requests. |
|
By using JSONResult, MVC returns the data in the JSON format |
Depending on the accepted header of the request, The Web API returns data in JSON, XML, and different formats |
|
“System.Web.MVC” assembly has all defined features of MVC. |
“System.Web.Http” assembly has all features of MVC but does not have routing, and model binding which are exclusive to Web API. |
|
MVC does not either support content negotiation or self-hosting. |
Web API supports content negotiation, self-hosting |
|
MVC controller is extremely heavy and we can see the number of interfaces the code uses. |
Web API has a lighter controller and it can distinguish requests by their passed parameters |
|
MVC controller cant support API views as it is tightly coupled with the views. |
Web API can be hosted anywhere without worrying about the views. |
| Popular MVC Frameworks are Ruby on Rails, Django, CherryPy, Spring MVC, Catalyst, etc. | Popular API Examples are Google Maps API, YouTube API, Twitter API, etc. |