This is a hands-on REST tutorial based on techniques described in REST in Practice: Hypermedia and Systems Architecture.
Over the course of the tutorial you'll build a hypermedia-driven text-based pick-your-path-to-adventure game in .NET using the new WCF Web APIs.
This isn't a tutorial on games design, however. Despite the non-enterprisey subject matter, the tutorial serves to illustrate how machine clients and services can cooperate to achieve a useful application goal. Business application analogies lurk around every corner and surprise you with every encounter.
The tutorial comprises three exercises. With each exercise you'll have to fix a number of broken unit and functional tests. Bit by bit, you'll build a working application:
- Exercise 1: Here we implement the server resources that make up the dungeon - the chambers, tunnels and caves in which our daring client will venture.
- Exercise 2: Next we build a crafty client that can discover a path through the dungeon. By the end of the exercise, the client ought to be able to navigate the dungeon from entrance to exit.
- Exercise 3: Last, we add an element of danger, populating the dungeon with encounters (more resources) that the client must overcome before it achieves its application goal.
Along the way you'll learn about:
- The Atom Syndication Format
- 'What if' client-side intelligence
- The client as arbiter of application state
- Hypermedia controls: links, link relations and forms
- DRY URIs
The tutorial has been tested on Windows 7 with Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2010 Express.
The tutorial is currently scheduled for the following events:
Progressive .NET Tutorials, London, Weds 7th Sept, 2011