title: Connecting to a RESTful API from Xamarin.Forms mobile application (and other computers on the same network)
body: <p>I am trying to connect my Xamarin.Forms mobile application to a RESTful API I'm hosting locally on my computer. I'm using Visual Studio for both the Xamarin.Forms mobile application and for the API, and for the API, I'm using ASP.NET Core (the specific template in Visual Studio is ASP.NET Core Web Application (.NET Framework) ). 
  <br/>It worked fine when I connected to it from my browser using a localhost address on the same computer I ran the API from (in my case, localhost:59475/api/ was the URL) and before connecting my mobile application to the API, I first tried to connect to the API from other computers on the same network, and I didn't manage to make it work so far. What I tried so far is the following - run the cmd command <code>netsh http add urlacl url=http://*:59475/ user=everyone</code> (along with other similar commands with other ports I thought may work), then I added an inbound firewall rule to allow all connections on that port. I then tried to connect to the API from other computers on the network by replacing "localhost" in the address with the IP of the computer running the API, and I received an HTTP 503 error when I did. Evantually what happend is when I tried to run the API from Visual Studio it showed an error of </p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>Unable to connect to web server 'IIS Express'</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>"Undoing" the netsh http commands (netsh http delete urlacl...) made it work again as it did at first (again, only able to connect to it from the same computer using my browser). I don't know how to make it work and would like to receive help please! :)</p>