Consuming WebApi in MVC3

Question

Using WebApi, what is the best way to consume a service in a MVC client?

If the response comes back as:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <ArrayOfContact xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> <Contact> <Id>1</Id> <Name>Bilbo Baggins</Name> </Contact> <Contact> <Id>2</Id> <Name>Frodo Baggins</Name> </Contact> </ArrayOfContact>

How can I take that, get my Contacts out and list them in a MVC3 Razor View using @Model?

There's a lot of examples online for the latest preview of WebApi but I can't find any that go a step further and show a client consuming the service, say using WebClient.

Thanks,

R.

Worth adding, the service is fine. If I run var contacts = new WebClient().DownloadString(" http:// localhost:9000/api/contacts"); I get the XML file no worries. — Richard
– Richard, Commented Dec 8, 2011 at 5:26
I would use Linq to Xml. See [this question][1] for some examples. [1]: stackoverflow.com/questions/670563/linq-to-read-xml — Lloyd
– Lloyd, Commented Dec 8, 2011 at 12:09

Alexander Zeitler · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-10 23:35:42Z

WCF Web API comes with a new, improved HttpClient implementation. Please take a look at this sample (which is included in the source code you can download here).

[Update]

var client = new HttpClient(); var task = client.GetAsync("http://webapi/Contacts"); var contacts = task.ContinueWith( t => { return t.Result.Content.ReadAsAsync<List<Contact>>(); }).Unwrap().Result; Console.WriteLine(contacts.Count);

That looks good but how do I map the xml in the response to my strongly typed objects?
You can access the Content property of the response and call the ReadAsAsync<T> where T is your type. HttpClient uses the build in XmlFormatter to deserialize your Xml.

Darin Dimitrov · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-08 07:10:40Z

You could define a model:

public class Contact { public int Id { get; set; } public string Name { get; set; } }

and then consume:

var url = "http://localhost:9000/api/contacts"; using (var client = new WebClient()) using (var reader = XmlReader.Create(client.OpenRead(url))) { var serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Contact[])); var contacts = (Contact[])serializer.Deserialize(reader); // TODO: Do something with the contacts }

I'd have like to get Alexander's reply workable but Darin's works as is.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Consuming WebApi in MVC3

2 Answers 2

2 Comments

1 Comment

Linked

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

2 Answers 2

2 Comments

1 Comment

Linked

Related