Elevate Your ASP.NET Core API Game

Choosing the Right ASP.NET Core API Approach: Minimal or Controller?

As a .NET developer, you are no stranger to building web applications using ASP.NET Core. With the introduction of ASP.NET Core 6, Microsoft has provided developers with two distinct approaches to building APIs: Minimal APIs and Controller APIs. In this article, we will explore both types, understand their pros and cons, and discuss scenarios where you might choose one over the other.

ASP.NET Core Minimal API

Minimal APIs are a lightweight and streamlined way to build web APIs in ASP.NET Core. They are designed to make API development faster and more concise.
Minimal APIs allow you to define routes and handle requests using a single file, often referred to as a “Program.cs” file.

As Microsoft describes them:

The design of minimal APIs hides the host class by default and focuses on configuration and extensibility via extension methods that take functions as lambda expressions.

Let’s dive into an example of building a Minimal API.

Minimal API Implementation Example

using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Builder;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Http…