How To Combine Both Soap And Rest Web Methods In Same Service C#

When talking well-nigh API (awarding programming interface) architectures, it's common to compare Lather vs. Residuum, ii of the most mutual API paradigms. Although the two are often compared every bit apples to apples, they're inherently different technologies and aren't easily compared on a granular level.

Why? Because Lather is a protocol, and Rest is an architectural style. A Balance API tin can actually apply the Soap protocol, just like it can use HTTP. And so, right off the bat, they're going to be packaged differently, part differently, and be used in unlike scenarios.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's await a little closer at each—including some of the pros that would make you want to utilize ane over the other for your awarding if the shoe fits.

What is an API?
What is a REST API?
What is Lather?
Soap vs. REST example
Lather vs. REST: The key differences
Soap and REST alternatives
Which API should you choose for your projection?

What is an API?

In the simplest of terms, an API is a piece of software that plugs 1 awarding directly into the data and services of another by granting it access to specific parts of a server. APIs permit two pieces of software communicate, and they're the ground for most modern applications. They allow u.s. to streamline It architectures, automate marketing workflows, and make it easier to share data sets.

What is a residual API?

Balance (Representational Country Transfer) is truly a "web services" API. REST APIs are based on URIs (Uniform Resource Identifier, of which a URL is a specific type) and the HTTP protocol and use JSON for a data format, which is super browser-uniform. (Information technology could also theoretically use the Lather protocol, as we mentioned above.) REST APIs can be simple to build and scale, but they can also be massive and complicated—it'southward all in how they're built, added on to, and what they're designed to do.

Reasons yous may want to build an API to exist RESTful include resource limitations, fewer security requirements, browser client compatibility, discoverability, data wellness, and scalability—things that really apply to spider web services.

Some quick REST information:

Rest is all about simplicity, thank you to HTTP protocols.
Residual APIs facilitate client-server communications and architectures. If information technology'due south RESTful, it's built on this client-server principle, with round trips between the two passing payloads of data.
REST APIs use a single uniform interface. This simplifies how applications interact with the API by requiring they all interface in the same manner, through the same portal. This has advantages and disadvantages; check with your programmer to come across if this volition affect implementation changes downwards the road.
REST is optimized for the web. Using JSON as its data format makes it compatible with browsers.‍
Residual is known for excellent operation and scalability. Merely, like whatsoever technology, it tin get bogged downward or bog downwards your app. That'due south why languages like GraphQL accept come forth to address problems fifty-fifty Balance can't solve.

What is SOAP?

SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) is its own protocol and is a bit more complex past defining more standards than Residue—things like security and how messages are sent. These built-in standards practise carry a flake more overhead. Still, they can be a deciding factor for organizations that crave more comprehensive features in the way of security, transactions, and ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) compliance. For the sake of this comparing, nosotros should bespeak out that many of the reasons why Soap is a good choice rarely utilize to web services scenarios, which makes it more than ideal for enterprise-type situations.

Reasons you may want to develop an application with a SOAP API include higher levels of security (east.grand., a mobile application interfacing with a bank), messaging apps that need reliable communication, communicating with legacy systems, or ACID compliance.

Lather has much tighter security. In addition to SSL support, WS-Security is a built-in standard that gives Soap some more enterprise-level security features if you lot require them.
Successful/retry logic for reliable messaging functionality. REST doesn't have a standard messaging system and tin can merely address communication failures by retrying. SOAP has successful/retry logic built-in and provides cease-to-end reliability even through Soap intermediaries.
Lather has built-in ACID compliance. Acid compliance reduces anomalies and protects the integrity of a database by prescribing how transactions can interact with the database. ACID is more conservative than other information consistency models, which is why information technology's typically favored when handling financial or otherwise sensitive transactions.

SOAP vs. REST case

To better grasp the applied differences between SOAP and REST, we take created an example of how the same functioning could be performed using the two technologies. In the example, we are making a request for user details.

SOAP example

Using Lather, the request to the API is an HTTP Mail request with an XML request torso. The asking body consists of an envelope which is a blazon of Soap wrapper that identifies the requested API, and a SOAP body that holds the asking parameters. In this instance, we want to fetch the user with the proper name "John."

--Code language-markup line-numbers--
<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:sch="http://world wide web.soapexample.com/xml/users">
<soapenv:Header/>
<soapenv:Body>
<sch:UserDetailsRequest>
<sch:name>John</sch:name>
</sch:UserDetailsRequest>
</soapenv:Torso>
</soapenv:Envelope>

‍

The response, but like the request, consists of a Lather envelope and a Soap torso. In this case, the SOAP body represents the requested user information.

--CODE language-markup line-numbers--
<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
<soapenv:Header/>
<soapenv:Body>
<ns2:UserDetailsResponse xmlns:ns2="http://www.soapexample.com/xml/users">
<ns2:User>
<ns2:proper name>John</ns2:name>
<ns2:age>5</ns2:age>
<ns2:accost>Greenville</ns2:address>
</ns2:User
</ns2:UserDetailsResponse>
</soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>

‍‍

REST instance

Residue APIs can be called with all of the HTTP verbs. To get a resource, in this case, a user, a GET request is used. While the Soap request holds the user'due south name in the trunk, a REST API accepts GET parameters from the URI.

Go https://restexample.com/users?name=John

As mentioned, REST APIs typically use the data format JSON. The user is represented in JSON like this:

--Code language-markup language-js line-numbers--
{
"name": "John",
"historic period": 5,
"address": "Greenville"
}

‍

Lather vs. Residual: The key differences

Beneath nosotros'll look at some of the key differences between the 2 paradigms.

Lather is a protocol, whereas Remainder is an architectural fashion

An API is designed to expose certain aspects of an application'south business logic on a server, and SOAP uses a service interface to exercise this while Residue uses URIs. While Lather APIs are designed later on the functions that the API exposes, REST APIs are designed afterwards the data. For instance, a Soap API that exposes functionality to create a user might include a function called "CreateUser" that would be specified in the Lather torso. A REST API would instead expose a URL /users, and a Mail service request towards that URL would create a user.

Residual APIs admission a resource for data (a URI); SOAP APIs perform an functioning

REST is an architecture that's more data-driven, while Soap is a standardized protocol for transferring structured information that's more than function-driven. Residue permits many different data formats, including plain text, HTML, XML, and JSON, which is a peachy fit for information and yields more than browser compatibility; Soap only uses XML. Lather APIs are express to using XML and the format including the Lather envelope, header, and body, equally we saw in the case above. Residue APIs are, all the same, format agnostic. While the most mutual format is JSON, formats such as XML, apparently text, and XML are also valid for REST APIs.

Security is handled differently

Soap supports WS-Security, which is great at the transport level and a bit more than comprehensive than SSL, and more ideal for integration with enterprise-level security tools. Both support SSL for end-to-end security and REST can use the secure version of the HTTP protocol, HTTPS. While both SOAP and REST APIs tin can encrypt their communication using HTTPS and SSL, the additional layer of WS-Security provided past SOAP acts on the message level to make sure not only that the content of a message tin can exist read by the right server but also the right process on the server.

Lather requires more bandwidth, whereas Residual requires fewer resources (depending on the API)

There'south a fiddling more overhead with Soap out of the gate because of the envelope-style of payload ship. Because Rest is used primarily for web services, its being lightweight is an reward in those scenarios.

As you can encounter in the example SOAP asking in the previous section, a SOAP asking contains more than data than a Remainder asking. This ways more bandwidth volition exist consumed when communicating with a SOAP API. This can have an impact on systems with large amounts of traffic.

SOAP vs REST

REST calls can be cached, while SOAP-based calls cannot be cached

Data can be marked as cacheable, which means information technology can be reused past the browser after without initiating some other asking dorsum to the server. This saves time and resources. Since all SOAP requests are sent using a Mail request, and Postal service requests are considered not-idempotent by the HTTP standard, responses will not exist cached at the HTTP level. REST APIs practise non have this limitation, but yous all the same need to implement the caching mechanisms yourself if yous want to utilise caching. Caching is a key functionality when functioning and scalability come into play.

APIs are built to handle your app'southward payload, and Residue and Soap do this differently

A payload is data sent over the internet, and when a payload is "heavy," it requires more resources. Rest tends to utilize HTTP and JSON, which lighten the payload; Soap relies more on XML.

Soap APIs accept a very strict communication contract and usually require the client to use a specific client library with generated code to access them. This means SOAP is tightly coupled with the server and provides a lower abstraction layer compared to Residual. A college level of abstraction between two pieces of technology ways less command over their interaction. Still, there'south also less complexity, and information technology's easier to brand updates to ane or the other without blowing up the whole relationship. This is a key divergence between Lather and Residue to consider. SOAP is very closely coupled with the server, having a strict communication contract with information technology that makes information technology more difficult to brand changes or updates. A client interacting with a REST API needs no cognition of the API. However, a customer interacting with a SOAP API needs knowledge about everything it will be using before initiating an interaction.

From a evolution perspective, a SOAP client usually needs third-party libraries to communicate with a SOAP API. In contrast, the just library you need to communicate with a REST API is unremarkably the HTTP request libraries that come congenital into your programming language.

SOAP and Residuum Alternatives

While Lather and REST have been the primary choices for building APIs during the last decades, other alternatives are condign increasingly common.

JSON

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is an open standard file format used to transmit data objects between many applications. It is a lightweight format to store and transfer data and is oft used when sending data from a server to a web page. The simplicity and faster transmission of Soap make it a viable alternative in many situations.

gRPC

gRPC (Remote Procedure Call) is an open-source system adult by Google which uses HTTP/two. It is commonly used to connect services in a microservices architecture and to connect mobile devices to backend services. The advantages of gRPC include more than lightweight messages than JSON, loftier performance, built-in lawmaking generation, and support for more connexion options such as streaming data.

GraphQL

GraphQL is a query language more often than not used to load data from a server to a client, but information technology does and so very efficiently. Created past Facebook, this relatively new applied science supports reading, writing, and subscribing to changes to data, and GraphQL servers are bachelor for languages like JavaScript, Python, C++, and more.

Just like REST, GraphQL communicates using HTTP and uses the JSON data format. I of the key differences and benefits is the possibility to specify the data you want to be returned from the server in one API call. For instance, if nosotros want to fetch a client, the customer orders, and the orders shipment condition using REST, nosotros would have to conduct separate HTTP requests for each piece of data. With GraphQL, we tin fetch everything using one request, which eliminates the HTTP overhead for each phone call.‍

Which API should you cull for your projection?

For the most office, when information technology comes to APIs for web services, developers tend toward a RESTful architecture unless the Lather path is clearly a better choice, say for an enterprise app that's backed by more than resources, needs super-tight security, and has more requirements.

Boosted advantages in choosing the REST API include:

Lightweight communication using HTTP and small payloads, for case, in the JSON data format
Fewer requirements for external libraries on the client-side
Enables the use of effective caching

There are, however, cases when SOAP might be your starting time pick, including:

Enterprise-level requirements on security
Need to integrate with legacy systems already using SOAP
Requirements on Acrid transactions or the use of the built-in retry mechanisms SOAP provides

No thing which technology you lot use, the most of import office of building a good API is designing it using all-time practices to make it easy to utilise and understand for clients. A well-designed API can greatly increase your delivery speed and hereafter-proof your engineering science stack.