Question

Does web api have more advantage than socket communication when I am writing a software need calling server to function?

If we write a web api,do we can take advantage of http, http server, web app framework to do more thing with less work than doing the same function by socket ?

If my client call my server through internet, Do we have not any reason to not implement it as web api ?

Answer 1

I’d say that ‘web API’ is-kind-of a ‘socket API’. While socket API may be basically anything running over sockets, web API is done using the HTTP protocol. That has a bit of limitation but usually the advantages are more important:

1. You reuse existing protocols and methods instead of re-inventing your own ones. That makes the work easier for you, and much easier for your users who do not have to implement everything from scratch;
2. You can use existing tools (and even a regular web browser) to debug your API. Well, with socket API you usually can use telnet but with more complex cases, a web browser or any HTTP querying tool is simpler to use;
3. You reuse HTTP ports 80 (and/or 443). That usually means it’s less likely that any firewall will forbid your users to access the ports used by your service;
4. And after all, if you choose the right technologies, you can reuse them ‘in’ or even ‘as’ web pages. For example, you can use AJAX or similar technologies to catch data from your API in scripts on your web page.

Even better, if you just use XML for the API output, you can basically make it an API and a web page at the same time. You simply add a reference to an XSLT stylesheet to it, and whenever a web browser uses that API, it will use it to transform the raw XML into HTML.