How do I make calls to a REST API using C#?

Question

This is the code I have so far:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System;
using System.Net.Http;
usi         


        

Answer 1

Check out Refit for making calls to REST services from .NET. I've found it very easy to use:

Refit: The automatic type-safe REST library for .NET Core, Xamarin and .NET

Refit is a library heavily inspired by Square's Retrofit library, and it turns your REST API into a live interface:

public interface IGitHubApi {
        [Get("/users/{user}")]
        Task<User> GetUser(string user);
}

// The RestService class generates an implementation of IGitHubApi
// that uses HttpClient to make its calls:

var gitHubApi = RestService.For<IGitHubApi>("https://api.github.com");

var octocat = await gitHubApi.GetUser("octocat");

Answer 2

I did it in this simple way, with Web API 2.0. You can remove UseDefaultCredentials. I used it for my own use cases.

List<YourObject> listObjects = new List<YourObject>();

string response = "";
using (var client = new WebClient() { UseDefaultCredentials = true })
{
     response = client.DownloadString(apiUrl);
}

listObjects = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<List<YourObject>>(response);
return listObjects;

Answer 3

The first step is to create the helper class for the HTTP client.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Net.Http;
using System.Net.Http.Headers;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

namespace callApi.Helpers
{
    public class CallApi
    {
        private readonly Uri BaseUrlUri;
        private HttpClient client = new HttpClient();

        public CallApi(string baseUrl)
        {
            BaseUrlUri = new Uri(baseUrl);
            client.BaseAddress = BaseUrlUri;
            client.DefaultRequestHeaders.Accept.Clear();
            client.DefaultRequestHeaders.Accept.Add(
                new MediaTypeWithQualityHeaderValue("application/json"));
        }

        public HttpClient getClient()
        {
            return client;
        }

        public HttpClient getClientWithBearer(string token)
        {
            client.DefaultRequestHeaders.Authorization = new AuthenticationHeaderValue("Bearer", token);
            return client;
        }
    }
}

Then you can use this class in your code.

This is an example of how you call the REST API without bearer using the above class.

// GET API/values
[HttpGet]
public async Task<ActionResult<string>> postNoBearerAsync(string email, string password,string baseUrl, string action)
{
    var request = new LoginRequest
    {
        email = email,
        password = password
    };

    var callApi = new CallApi(baseUrl);
    var client = callApi.getClient();
    HttpResponseMessage response = await client.PostAsJsonAsync(action, request);
    if (response.IsSuccessStatusCode)
        return Ok(await response.Content.ReadAsAsync<string>());
    else
        return NotFound();
}

This is an example of how you can call the REST API that require bearer.

// GET API/values
[HttpGet]
public async Task<ActionResult<string>> getUseBearerAsync(string token, string baseUrl, string action)
{
    var callApi = new CallApi(baseUrl);
    var client = callApi.getClient();
    client.DefaultRequestHeaders.Authorization = new AuthenticationHeaderValue("Bearer", token);
    HttpResponseMessage response = await client.GetAsync(action);
    if (response.IsSuccessStatusCode)
    {
        return Ok(await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync());
    }
    else
        return NotFound();
}

You can also refer to the below repository if you want to see the working example of how it works.

https://github.com/mokh223/callApi