Simple data binding with Knockout, Web API and ASP.Net Web Forms

In this post We are going to see How Knockout, ASP.Net Web API and ASP.Net works together smoothly. There are lots many examples of ASP.Net MVC,Web API and Knockout.js available on web working together  nicely. So I thought it will be a good idea to write a blog post about how ASP.Net Web API, ASP.Net Web Forms,Knockout.js works together and how we can create simple data binding with Knockout.js.

ASP.Net Web Forms:

As we all know ASP.Net Web Forms is one of premier development technology widely use in creating web sites and web applications. ASP.Net Web Forms allow to create dynamic websites using event driven model. It is one of the easiest way to create web applications and web sites.

ASP.Net Web API:

ASP.Net Web API is a framework that allows to build HTTP Service that reach a broad range of clients including browsers and mobile devices.It provides very easy way to write restful http services. Its can be access by any type of client over HTTP protocol. Client can make a GET, PUT,POST and DELETE request based on its requirement and get the response appropriately.

Knockout JS:

As per knockoutjs.com, Knockout is a JavaScript library that helps you to create rich, responsive display and editor user interfaces with a clean underlying data model. It provides a way to declarative bindings using an ‘Observable’ view model on browser. It supports two way bindings.

What’s new in ASP.NET and Web Tools 2012.2 Release Candidate

Recently before some time, Scott Gu announced ASP.NET and Web Tools 2012.2 Release Candidate. I have downloaded it and used it for a while and I have found following new things.

ASP.NET Enhancements:

  • New facebook asp.net mvc template is  there. Creating facebook application with asp.net mvc become very easy. In just a few step you can easily create facebook application and get data of users and friends of facebook.
  • Real Time Signal R support is there. You can easily create chat kind of applications with it. You can also take advantage of new web socket in .NET 4.5.
  • New updates with ASP.NET WEB Api now supports OData, Integrated tracing and automatically generating help document for your api
  • ASP.NET Friendly URLs: This feature makes developers life very easy with creating SEO friendly and cleaner looking URLs with out .aspx extension. The Friendly URLs feature also makes it easier for developers to add mobile support to their applications with support for mobile .ASPX pages and  supporting switching between desktop and mobile views.  It can be used with existing ASP.NET v4.0 applications
  • Enhancement to Web publishing
  • All new single page application template with knock out JavaScript library and restful UI.

ASP.NET Web API Basics

We have seen that now web is really becoming cross plate form and you can see your services or API can be exposed to any client. Till now one of big challenges is to choose platform for this kind of service. There are so many options available like web services, WCF services,Generic Handlers, directly writing responses on aspx page etc. There are plenty of options available and each one has their own pros and cons.  But now we have one simpler answer for that is ASP.NET Web API.

What is Web API?

ASP.NET Web API is a framework for building web API on the top of .NET framework. It’s a framework for building and consuming web services that can be use at broad range of clients like browsers,tablets phones etc. You can expose JSON or XML whatever you want to use.

Why to use Web API?

Think about a situation where a jQuery script that is making a ajax request and we need some thing who can expose data from the server to the client at that time WEB API can be very handy you can expose server data in XML or JSON form and you can make that call with simple http request. No lengthy code required to call WEB API.