ASP.NET MVC 4 and the Web API -Building a REST Service from Start to Finish

Good first two chapters

This is a simul-post of an Amazon book review.

I hate to give such a low rating to a book of a good topic that the author seems to have tried hard to write, but to help potential readers I have to give it 2 stars to warn them.

I read the first two chapters with great interest and was impressed.  I started to feel something was not right when reaching Chapter 3 because I luckily attended a presentation on ASP.Net Web API before reading this book, and learned that Microsoft has done a great job in simplifying Web API development.  The book gave me an impression it was a fairly daunting task involving setting up all kinds of things.  I went to Amazon and read the top reviews of this book that confirmed my suspicion – the book has made the topic unnecessarily complex. 

My suggestion is that, for those familiar with MVC, read the first two chapters of this book, then go to the website of ASP.Net Web API  to read a few tutorials there, then you will be ready to go.  Microsoft has done a fantastic job in providing templates for Web API projects. I got a Web API project with a few public APIs up and running in half a day. 

For those who are not familiar MVC, spending one or two days on learning MVC prior to diving into Web API may be necessary.