Question

I am creating my first ASP.NET MVC 3 application, and my data comes from a data source I can access only via its REST API.

I will only be using READ-ONLY access at this point to the REST data source (no updating, etc.)

I would like to use the Entity Framework V4 to provide a Business Entity interface to MVC 3 without exposing it to the REST API.

I need to get something working quickly – so I don’t have time to fully understand the Server Layer / UnitOfWork and Repository patterns just yet, although I plan to go there next.

I am willing to use a Repository class at this time, but not ready for DI / IoC container yet.

Any suggestions on where the RESP API calls go?

EDIT

Learned by asking this question that it is not necessarily useful to integrate an ORM with a REST API – See my accepted answer below.

Answer 1

An Object/Relational Mapper, or ORM, like Entity Framework has specifically been developed to abstract away a relational database. It might not be the right fit for REST calls.

You could instead build a repository class that encapsulates the REST call and exposes methods like IEnumerable<T> GetAll() or T GetyById(...).