Summary
No matter the kind of programmer you are, there will be many scenarios in which you will have to consume a web service. There are different kinds of services online, but the most common type is RESTful. REST is just a set of guidelines and should therefore not be mixed up with HTTP. REST APIs are simple, self-documented, well-structured, and are currently a golden standard of Web APIs. However, in most cases in the context of RESTful APIs, a request is sent over HTTP and your message contains JSON.
The main tool for making HTTP calls using C# is HttpClient, however, before you try to implement HTTP calls yourself, you should look for a NuGet package of the Web API you're trying to consume. Azure Blob storage, Azure Text Analytics, PayPal, and GitHub are just a few examples of Web APIs.
In this chapter, you learned about a lot of functionality on the web that is done for you. It's not hard to consume; all you need to know now is how to communicate with...
