The software requirements for creating a Http service using ASP.NET web API are:

Visual Studio 2010 or Visual Studio 2012 RC

MVC 4.0

In this article I am using Visual Studio 2012 RC.

Steps for creating Web API Project



Start Visual Studio 2012 RC and select New Project from the Start page. Or, from the File menu, select New and then Project.



Select Installed Templates and expand the Visual C# node. Under Visual C#, select Web. In the list of project templates, select ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Application. Name the project "SampleMvcWebAPI" and click OK.







After that in the list of project templates select the Web API template.







Now you will have the basic architecture of a MVC (Model, View and Controller) Project. If you will expand the controller then you will see that there are already two controllers available.

HomeController : This is a Traditional controller which inherits the Controller class and returns the view. This Controller is not related to the Web API ValueController : This Controller is related to the Web API; it inherits the ApiController class and returns data instead of the view.