Restier: Bringing WCF Data Services and Web API OData together

Microsoft is working on a new framework called Restier:

RESTier is a RESTful API development framework for building standardized, OData V4 based REST services on .NET. It can be seen as a middle-ware on top of Web API OData. RESTier combines the convenience and simplicity of WCF Data Services alongside the flexibility and extensibility of Web API OData.

Similar to a WCF Data Service it exposes your Data Model through a REST service. 

Get started.

• Create a new MVC application
• Add an Entity Framework Code First context
• Include the Microsoft.Restier NuGet Package(don’t forget to set Include prerelease)

• Create a Domain class that wraps your DbContext:

	using Microsoft.Restier.EntityFramework;
	public class NorthwindDomain : DbDomain<NorthwindContext>
	{
	public NorthwindContext Context
	{
	get { return DbContext; }
	}
	}

view raw NorthwindDomain.cs hosted with ❤ by GitHub

• Add a Web Api controller inheriting from ODataDomainController that wraps the Domain class:

	using Microsoft.Restier.WebApi;
	public class NorthwindController : ODataDomainController<NorthwindDomain>
	{
	private NorthwindContext DbContext
	{
	get { return Domain.Context;}
	}
	}

view raw NorthwindController.cs hosted with ❤ by GitHub

• As a last step add an extra route to the WebApiConfig file:

	using Microsoft.Restier.WebApi.Batch;
	using RestierSample.Controllers;
	using Microsoft.Restier.WebApi;
	using System;
	using System.Collections.Generic;
	using System.Linq;
	using System.Web;
	using System.Web.Http;
	namespace RestierSample.App_Start
	{
	public static class WebApiConfig
	{
	public static void Register(HttpConfiguration config)
	{
	config.MapHttpAttributeRoutes();
	config.MapODataDomainRoute<NorthwindController>(
	"NorthwindApi", "api/Northwind",
	new ODataDomainBatchHandler(GlobalConfiguration.DefaultServer));
	config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
	name: "DefaultApi",
	routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{id}",
	defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional }
	);
	}
	}
	}

view raw WebApiConfig.cs hosted with ❤ by GitHub

• If you run the application and browse to /api/northwind, you can see the available entity sets: