ASP.NET Web API 2.1 introduced some significant improvements to the mechanisms that support global error handling. Before this release there were a number of different types of errors that would be handled directly by the runtime and there was no easy way to intercept these errors and add your own custom behavior. The standard guidance suggests […]
In my first deep dive into a HTTP header on the user-agent header I said that I would try and produce a series of posts going under the covers on certain HTTP headers. This post is about the Vary header. The Vary header both wonderful and sad at the same time. I’ll discuss how to make it work […]
Unfortunately, I still regularly run into articles on the web that misunderstand the concept of an HTTP resource. Considering it is a core piece of web architecture, having a clear understanding of what it means can make many other pieces of web architectural guidance considerably easier to understand. To try and keep this post as […]
This opinion has been stewing for a couple of years now, but following an excellent conversation I had with Ted Young the other evening at the API Craft San Francisco event, I think it is time to have more discussion around this subject. A little bit of history I have been a big supporter of the HAL media […]
In our Runscope HipChat room a few weeks ago, I was asked about Unicode encoding in URLs. After a quick sob about why I never get asked the easy questions, I decided it was time to do some investigating. I had explored this subject in the past whilst trying to get Unicode support working in my URI Templates […]
A brewing debate in the .Net community recently came to a boil when Brendan Forster attempted to address an open issue for the Octokit library, Signed Octokit Releases, Yay or Nay? It is an interesting debate with many strong opinions. Unfortunately I think the debate is down in the weeds and I’d like to add a bit of a […]
A few months ago I put up a site http://hypermediaapi.com with the intention of using it as place to aggregate links to all things hypermedia related. I built the site using Web API because a) I know how to use it, and b) I wanted to prove a point that a Web Site is really […]
So there I was, sitting at my PC hunting some bugs when up pops John Sheehan on IM and starts asking me questions about OPTIONS and TRACE http methods. I pretty much always have the HTTP spec close at hand so I think I was able to at least fake some prior knowledge in attempting to answer […]
It seems everyone these days wants an API for their web application. Getting a primitive Web API up and running can be deceptively simple. However, what many people don’t realize is that with the success of an API can come a variety of problems. As developers, we are used to dealing with unforeseen problems, we […]