I have just discovered Nancy when I was trying to find a way to decouple the MVC element from my ASP.NET applications. I knew there had to be a way! It is very easy to decouple your Web API stuff using the readily available Owin packages ( Microsoft.AspNet.WebApi.Owin).

How easy is it to set up?

It’s bloomin’ easy! I managed to get some simple output with only 2 files! Which is great, considering the default MVC scaffold has a whole lot of files.

Where do I begin?

So you’re ready? Okay, lets play with Nancy! 😀

You will need to run these 2 commands from the Package Manager Console:

• Install-Package Microsoft.Owin.Host.SystemWeb
• Install-Package Nancy.Owin

Next we need to add a Startup file, which is the entry point for an Owin web application.
The great thing is that it only takes a few lines of code 🙂

Nancy Modules

Modules are just like the Controllers of a standard MVC web application. Although there is one major difference. Unlike with a standard MVC app, you will have to define your methods and routes manually from within the module. For people who have been using Attribute Routing this should feel quite normal.

I guess it is time to show you how simple this actually is!

This will just print Hello, World on to the / route.

What did I tell you?!

Two files, and we already have a functional MVC application.

Whats next?

There is a lot more stuff that Nancy can do. And I will write another article soon on its additional features, such as model validation, and being able to use Razor views with your routes.