Creating a minimal Web API web project 10. May 2012 Shawn MVC, Web API (3) The ASP.NET web projects have a history of being bloated. Phil Haack created a Really Empty ASP.NET MVC 3 Project Template. The same is true for MVC4 and the new Web API. The “Empty” MVC 4 Application (using razor) has 37 references, 16 JavaScript files, 15 CSS files, 13 images, 3 razor files, and a partridge in a pear tree. This is far from empty. But it does give you everything you could need to build out your own MVC application. The Web API MVC 4 Application has all of that plus two controllers (one API and one view), and one more razor file. I wanted to create a simple project that would allow me to take advantage of the awesomeness that Web API brings but without all the overhead of MVC or anything else. I asked Glenn Block if he knew about anything out there that talked about the smallest possible Web API project. This started a couple of educational conversions in which Glenn brought in other great Web API minds. He quickly stated that I could use self host. For one, I wa... [More]