How to start a Web API project using .NET 5.0 and C#

In this article I will go through a step-by-step example demonstrating how to start a new Web API project using the .NET 5.0 open source framework and C#.

1. Required Software

The applications listed in this section are needed prior to starting this tutorial which will enable us to create the WebAPI project.

One can make the argument that the second application (Postman) is technically not a required app to be installed as there are many different ways to test your API calls. Technically this is true; however Postman has become a very useful tool that it would be almost not beneficial not to use it as it will save you a lot of time.

Btw: Postman is not the only tool that you can use, there are many other application that are similar and you can choose to use them instead however for this tutorial I am choosing to use Postman.

Visual Studio (Link) — Microsoft Visual Studio is an integrated development environment from Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs, as well as websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps

Postman (Link) — Postman is the collaboration platform for API development. Postman simplifies each step of building an API and streamlines collaboration so you can create better APIs faster.

If you have Visual Studio and Postman already installed on you machine then you do can skip to the next section.