Architecture overview
Ultimately behind-the-scenes ServiceStack is just built on top of a set of Raw ASP.NET IHttpHandler's. The entry point for all ASP.NET and HttpListener requests is in the ServiceStackHttpHandlerFactory whose purpose is to return the appropriate IHttpHandler for the incoming request.
ServiceStack's logical diagram is captured below:
There are 2 distinct modes in any ServiceStack application:
- AppHost Setup and Configuration - Only done once for all services. Run only once on App StartUp.
- Runtime - Run on every request: uses dependencies, plugins, etc. defined in the AppHost. Each new request re-binds all IOC dependencies to a new service instance which gets disposed at the end of each request.
The implementation of this can be visualized below:
After the IHttpHandler is returned, it gets executed with the current ASP.NET or HttpListener request wrapped in a common IHttpRequest instance.
The implementation of RestHandler shows what happens during a typical ServiceStack request:
