I'm new to MVC Web Api but I have some experience working with ServiceStack framework. Some of the web api examples look a lot like RPC with more action methods and less parameters. In fact most examples seem to limit the request parameter to an id. I would like to create some reporting services using request/response because the request gets quite complex with all the reporting criteria.
Here's my simplified request / response types:
public class PendingRequest
{
public string Id { get; set; }
public int AccountId { get; set; }
public DateTime? FromDate { get; set; }
public DateTime? ToDate { get; set; }
}
public class PendingResponse
{
public string Id { get; set; }
public IEnumerable<Pending> Data { get; set; }
}
And my outline reports controller:
public class ReportsController : ApiController
{
public async Task<PendingResponse> GetPending(PendingRequest request)
{
return new PendingResponse
{
Id = request.Id,
// Data = await Repo.GetPending()
};
}
public async Task<ShippedResponse> GetShipped(ShippedRequest request)
{
return new ShippedResponse
{
Id = request.Id,
// Data = await Repo.GetShipped()
};
}
public async Task<ProductsResponse> GetProducts(ProductsRequest request)
{
return new ProductsResponse
{
Id = request.Id,
// Data = await Repo.GetProducts()
};
}
}
And my routing and config for a self-hosting app:
class Program
{
static void Main()
{
var config = new HttpSelfHostConfiguration("http://localhost:8080");
config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
name: "Reports",
routeTemplate: "api/reports/{action}",
defaults: new
{
controller = "Reports"
});
using (var server = new HttpSelfHostServer(config))
{
server.OpenAsync().Wait();
Console.WriteLine("Press Enter to quit.");
Console.ReadLine();
}
}
}
So with this routing I intend the action to be the name of the report. Note i've not included the request parameter here. Not sure if I should or not.
The problem is actually on the client side. With the HttpClient the GetAsync method does not allow me to include the JSON request object. I see an extension method PostAsJsonAsync but surely this shouldn't be a POST? Without a GetAsJsonAsync or similar then I can't see a way of including a request with a GET?
To be honest I prefer ServiceStack but there appears to be no async support yet. I need to develop some high performance services which are I/O intensive and I want to reduce the blocking as much as possible.
UPDATE:
It seems Web Api will perform the model binding if, rather than using the request body, I include the model's parameters as part of the query string. In order for this to work, the Get method needs to prefix the model type with the [FromUri] attribute, which informs the model binder that the model should be constructed from the request query string. Messy, but works.
[ActionName("Pending")]
public async Task<PendingResponse> GetPending([FromUri] PendingRequest request)
{
return new PendingResponse
{
Id = request.Id,
// query = ...build from request params
// Data = await Repo.GetPending(query)
};
}
And now on the client side I perform the following:
var result = await _httpClient.GetAsync("api/reports/pending?Id=123&AccountId=456");
result.EnsureSuccessStatusCode();
var response = await result.Content.ReadAsAsync<PendingResponse>();
A call to the service results in the GetPending method being called with a copy of the PendingRequest object materialised from the supplied query string parameters.
