Visual Studio 2015 introduced "One ASP.NET" which means you use "Create ASP.NET Application" to create any type of application. The follow up dialog has the Web API selection there.

VS 2015 will use the latest version installed which MVC 5/Web API 2.0. The feature differences between these are minor actually - the version is mostly arbitrary to reflect the ASP.NET release cycle.

FWIW, any documentation on Web API shouldn't be talking about MVC version, because Web API and MVC are really two separate things (although similar and they can co-exist in shte same project).

+++ Rick ---


>Hi,
>
>I am trying, again for the 100th time :(, to learn developing Web API. I am using a short book from Succinctly specifically designed for learning ASP.NET Web API. The book is probably dated but hopefully not that much. When going through steps of creating Hello World, the author is using ASP.NET MVC 4 project template in VS 2012. I am using VS 2015 Community. And when I create a new project, I don't see the template ASP.NET Web API. But what I see, appears to be the closest, is ASP.NET Web Application. Would it give me pretty the same project structure as ASP.NET MVC 4?
>
>TIA
>
>Update. When choosing the ASP.NET Web Application, VS prompts me to choose from the list of templates. One of them is Web API (as shown in attached image). I hope it is similar to MVC 4.
>
>Update 2. So, I went ahead and chose the template Web API. And, voila, VS 2015 created a project. Looking at the Solution Explorer, it is MVC type. But how do I determine if this is MVC 4 or MVC 5?