Deploy a callback API to a VM with IIS

Question

I am hoping to deploy a web api to handle callbacks from a 3rd party.

I'm a beginner at C#, but I've written a simple Web API using Visual Studio in order to handle the callbacks. To test on my dev machine I click the green run button with IIS selected on localhost, and the dll is created. I can feed it some 3rd party test JSON files (using Postman) and the database is updating correctly. So far so good.

Now I'm looking at deployment to a test server, which can receive live (test) callbacks. To do this, I've run up a new VM with a public IP address, installed SQL Express and also installed IIS.

I am assuming the next step is to publish (web deploy) from VS.

But I'm becoming confused with regard to domain name, URL and IP address. a) Do I need to register a domain name for the IP address? (There is no UI, just the callback endpoint) b) When setting up the publishing profile for web deploy, what is the Destination URL?

There is a lot of information available on the subject, but there are clearly a few important gaps in my knowledge, and I can't seem to fill 'em.

Thanks

Answer 1

If I am understanding your question correctly - no you do not need a domain name to test your application. You can use a tool like Swagger to test your API. Read more here: https://www.blazemeter.com/blog/getting-started-with-swagger-ui

Good luck!