I remember coming across APIs/URLs like: http://www.testsite.com/students.json, which returns a JSON response, and read somewhere that you can find it via e.g. Chrome dev tool under Network tab.
Where/how can I find the JSON APIs/URLs? Would ultimately use requests to fetch the JSON.
The best place to find out about a JSON-based API is the documentation provided by API's maintainer. Typically, maintainers who would like their API to be consumed by clients provide documentation. Sometimes, they build a navigable API where responses have http links to other resources of their API and do not provide an explicit documentation. If they do so, that could be called as implicit documentation.
Networks tab in a web browser's developers' tools provides a way to capture network traffic going in and out of the browser. If a website makes any asynchronous http request, that will be captured and shown here. Again depending on the design and strategy of the website maker, this could be a JSON based response coming from a URL or a HTML or any other type. Content-Type header hints at the type of response. You can use this cue as well to see if the content of the response is application/json. Thus, obtaaining a url that you can use in your scripts.
What you are trying to do here is observing a website's network traffic from your browser and are trying to see if there is any link that brings you a JSON based response instead of HTML. So, that you can use a JSON parser instead of a HTML parser. Possibly, because HTML parsers are slow.
The Answer to your specific question is, if you get lucky you might find a link that serves a JSON response. If not, you might wanna fall back on HTML parsing.
Related
I am trying to get started with REST API calls by seeing how to format the API calls using a browser. Most examples I have found online use SDKs or just return all fields for a request.
For example, I am trying to use the Soundcloud API to view track information.
To start, I've made a simple request in the browser as follows http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/13158665.json?client_id=31a9f4a3314c219bd5c79393a8a569ec which returns a bunch of info about the track in JSON format
(e.g. {"kind":"track","id":13158665,"created_at":"2011/04/06 15:37:43 ...})
Is it possible to only to get returned the "created_at" value using the browser? I apologize if this question is basic, but I don't know what keywords to search online. Links to basic guides would be nice, although I would prefer to stay out of using a specific SDK for the time being.
In fact, it's really hard to answer such question since it depends on the Web APIs. I mean if the API supports to return only a subset of fields, you could but if not, you will receive all the content. From what I saw on the documentation, it's not possible. The filters only allow you to get a subset of elements and not control the list of returned fields within elements.
Notice that you have a great application to execute HTTP requests (and also REST) in Chrome: Postman. This allows to execute all HTTP methods and not only GET ones and controls the headers and sent content and also see what is received back.
If you use Firefox, Firebug provides a similar thing.
To finish, you could have a look at this link to find out hints about the way Web APIs work and are designed: https://templth.wordpress.com/2014/12/15/designing-a-web-api/.
Hope it helps you and I answered you question,
Thierry
Straight from the browser bar you can utilize REST endpoints that respond to a GET message. That is what you are doing when you hit that URI, you are sending an HTTP GET message to that server and it is sending back a JSON.
You are not always guaranteed a JSON, or anything when hitting a known REST endpoint. What each endpoint returns when hit with a GET is specific to how it was built. In that case, it is built to return a JSON, but some may return an HTML page. In my personal experience, most endpoints that utilize JSON returns expect you to process that object in a computer fashion and don't give you a lot of options to get a specific field of the JSON. Here is a good link on how to process JSON utilizing JavaScript.
You can utilize REST clients (such as the Advanced REST Client for Chrome) to craft HTTP POST and PUT if a specific REST endpoint has the functionality built in to receive data and do something with it. For example, a lot of wiki style REST endpoints will allow you to create a page with a specifically crafted HTTP POST with either specific header information, URI parameters or a JSON as part of it.
you can install DHC client app in your chrome and send request like put or get
I have a web page that is basically a form the user fills out.
I developed a C# VSTO Outlook 2010 Add-In that can create a JSON object based on the details of an appointment on a user's calendar. The JSON is then passed via the URL (in the Query String) to my web page. The object that is passed is used to automatically fill in the details on the web form. The web page is ASP.NET, although I don't think that's relevant.
This is the first time I've ever passed a JSON object in a URL. Are there any potential pitfalls I should watch out for? Anything that could go wrong? I saw in this question that someone said you can pass JSON objects via URL with "no problems" but the question there was "can I do it?" rather than "what problems might I run into?"
The most realistic problem (if you are not concerned with security) is the GET request size limitation. The IE, for example, have limitation of 2Kb for GET requests. So you could get into situation there your request will be trimmed.
And for the security issues mentioned, the GET requests are stored completely in browser history and thus can be potentially exposed to third-party.
whenever, i request to server using jQuery-ajax for retrieve data that is shows in firebug so that is unsafe or hackable.
even facebook and google+ hide their json data, but how?
You could use a library like crypto-js to encrypt all data that is sent to and from the server. However, most of the time, that is an overkill when you already use https (since you should make your application hack resistant via server side validation and safety is ensured by the real encryption offered by https).
To create a chart, I found that Bloomberg is providing data in JSON format. Please have a look at this URL: http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/chart/data/1Y/IBM:US This sends data of the chart in JSON format. I want to get this data in an Ajax request, so that I can parse it and create a chart. But I can't use Ajax, as this is a cross domain affair. I need to use JSONP. I am not sure how Bloomberg API supports JSOP. If you know how can we use JSONP with the above url, please let me know. If there is any alternative, please let me know.
You can't. JSONP requires that the server be on board with the transaction so that it can properly handle the callback injection. If the server isn't providing it, there's no way to force it unilaterally.
What you might be able to do, subject to your hosting provider's policies, is have your server-side script load the Bloomberg data, then pass it on from there, either printed in the initial page or as a JSON/JSONP call to your own server (which is probably a better idea, as it leaves you more flexibility to update the data on the fly and also allows the page's markup to be cached).
Note that some hosting providers do not allow outgoing requests because they don't want their servers to be used as proxies (which is, after all, basically what I'm suggesting you do). You may have an option to whitelist Bloomberg, or you may just need to keep outgoing traffic to a minimum (i.e. cache the Bloomberg data on your server so that you're not refreshing it every time someone loads your page). Check your hosting terms.
I need to be able to consume some JSON data in a POST request from another web app. I have tried looking at the various methods on the Request class, but nothing seems to give me the JSON I need.
Using Request.Form will not work, since it is not coming from a form, but another web app. The content type is application/json, and from examining the whole HTTP request, I know the JSON is in there. What is the best way to get at this JSON data?
Note: I am working from within an action on a controller.
I think you can get your JSON from your model parameter inside the Action of the Controller. Check out this article that explains a bit of what I mean.
You can also read this one for reference
Since you are consuming data from another web app I would use a REST web service instead of a controller in an MVC application. You cans use the ASP.NET Web API which makes it easy to setup a REST web API and it is tightly integrated in with MVC 4, which is now in Beta. If the communication is cross domain (i.e. different servers and/or ports) you will need to use JSONP. You can go to this StackOverflow QA for directions on how to use JSONP with Web API.