title: Moving from WebAPI REST to SignalR realtime (for the lazy coder)
body: <p>I have an ASP.NET app that has a dozen ViewModel-centric WebAPI controllers presenting a RESTful API. Each controller supports a few HTTP methods. All very normal, and AFAIK a pretty clean implementation. The majority of those API methods would benefit greatly from SignalR (or other realtime) integration. For example:</p>
  
  <pre><code>public class AppointmentController : BaseApiController
  {
      public IHttpActionResult Delete(int id) {
          DataServices.AppointmentService.Cancel(id);
          return Ok();
      }
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This WebAPI tooling:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>does all the routing for me: <code>Delete(int id)</code></li>
  <li>deserializes JSON</li>
  <li>serializes the response <code>Ok()</code></li>
  <li>some other helpful bits with security, etc.</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p><strong>If I move to SignalR, do I have to take a few step back and now write all that code myself, or am I overlooking some component or concept?</strong> </p>
  
  <p>And it looks like at the AngularJS client I have a similar impedance...</p>
  
  <p>I'm currently using .NET 4.5, but happy to move. And I'm not restricted to SignalR either. I welcome recommendations for other realtime libraries that are more complete and preserve my ASP.NET and EntityFramework investment.</p>