Frameworks on GenHTTP Webserver

Webservices

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The webservice module provides an easy way to implement RESTful services that can be consumed by clients as needed.

Hosting an API

To host an API using this framework you can define a new class that hosts your operations as dedicated methods. The signature of those methods will define how your API can be called via HTTP.

Functional Handlers

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

With this module, requests can be handled in a functional manner, reducing the boilerplate code to be written by a web application developer.

Hosting an API

To host an API using this framework you can create an Inline handler and add your operations as needed.

 C#
 
 
using GenHTTP.Engine.Internal;

using GenHTTP.Modules.ApiBrowsing;
using GenHTTP.Modules.Functional;
using GenHTTP.Modules.Layouting;
using GenHTTP.Modules.OpenApi;
using GenHTTP.Modules.Security;

var bookService = Inline.Create() 
 // GET http://localhost:8080/books/?page=1&pageSize=20
 .Get((int page, int pageSize) => /* ... */)
 // GET http://localhost:8080/books/4711
 .Get(":id", (int id) => /* ... */) 
 // PUT http://localhost:8080/books/
 .Put((Book book) => /* ... */) 
 // POST http://localhost:8080/books/
 .Post((Book book) => /* ... */) 
 // DELETE http://localhost:8080/books/4711
 .Delete(":id", (int id) => /* ... */);

var api = Layout.Create()
 .Add("books", bookService)
 .Add(CorsPolicy.Permissive())
 .AddOpenApi() // http://localhost:8080/openapi.json
 .AddRedoc(); // http://localhost:8080/redoc/

await Host.Create()
 .Handler(api)
 .Development()
 .RunAsync();

Further Resources

The following capabilities are shared by various application frameworks:

Controllers

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

GenHTTP.Modules.Controllers Package on NuGet

This framework allows to create APIs by defining and implementing controller classes. In contrast to ASP.NET, you cannot use this framework to dynamically render HTML pages in an MVC style project, so this is just another flavor of defining a web API.

Websockets

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 00:27:41 +0200

Websockets allow to create a bidirectional connection between your clients and your server, allowing both sides to push content without the need of sending HTTP requests.

Flavors

There are three different flavors that you can use to host a web socket endpoint. They do not differ in functionality. In this section we will spawn a simple websocket server that will relay incoming messages to all other connected clients (so basically a simple chat application). In the “Client” section you will find a simple HTML file that can be opened in a browser to connect to your server.

Single Page Applications (SPA)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

GenHTTP.Modules.SinglePageApplications Package on NuGet

This handler provides an easy way to serve a single page application (for example a Vue.js, React, or Angular app) to your clients.

Static Websites

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

GenHTTP.Modules.StaticWebsites Package on NuGet

This handler provides an easy way to serve a static website such as a Hugo application to your clients.

Custom Frameworks

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The framework layer of GenHTTP allows application frameworks (such as webservices or controllers) to host a set of operations (put simply a route with a piece of C# code to be executed). This way the application framework itself is only a very thin layer - it analyzes the given scope (such as a controller class) and derives operations from it which are then handled by the generic framework part. This way, all application frameworks share the same feature level and can support things like parameter binding, serialization, async execution or code generation. To give an example, the webservice handler which provides the whole webservice framework consists of 70 lines of code only - everything else is done by the underlying framework layer.