have been with mvc for a little while. the usual case when an action returning json, it is initialized by ajax in the view and the view is expecting info inside the json.
is there a case the action returning json to the view and is caught by something else instead of javascript? Thanks.
Yes, a JSON API can be consumed by a large variety of clients. It can be the browser sending an AJAX request, but it can also be a desktop application fetching data from the Internet, a server-side job scraping the data for analysis, etc.
For example, let's say you're running a stock exchange website, and you're publishing current stock values as JSON. You can use that JSON on your website to display the data, but you (or any other developer) can also write a desktop application which will get that data and process it on a local machine (to, for example, show the user which stocks they should buy). Or aggregate data from different sources.
Many websites make their APIs public, so that third party developers can write alternative clients, integrate the API's functionality in their own products, and so on. For example, GitHub's APIs are public - the GitHub website can utilize them for the AJAX requests, and GitHub for Windows can show you the list of repositories you own by making a request to that API using C#'s WebClient.
Related
Premise:
This question is more like "is this the correct approach?" rather then "how do I do this?"
Situation:
I have created a CherryPy REST application following this tutorial. The data are returned using the json module with a simple json.dumps. This example works. I have a mako template which I would like to use to create a HTML table with the data. Again, the template by itself works.
The question: In my head, it works this way:
The user asks for a URL
The REST API creates the JSON with the results
The mako template produces the HTML given the results
The HTML is returned to the user
My problem is, I'm not sure this is the right approach: in my (small) experience, the JSON should be returned to the client, which should render it in some way (using jQuery or some other client-side language); instead, the mako template works on the server-side, and that's where I got stuck.
Do you have any advice?
You don't need REST to solve this, this is a regular web application. Just to show you how this works by a REST service:
The user asks the REST client to do some-automated-stuff on the service
The client requests example.com/api/v1 to get the main page
The client looks for hyperlinks on the main page
The client finds hyperlink with relation=some-automated-stuff
The client follows that hyperlink and gets a JSON result from the REST API
The client uses the mako template and produces the HTML given the results
The HTML is returned to the user
A typical client is a 3rd party server side application, which is registered by the service and got a unique API key. The users allow to the clients to do some-automated-stuff on their account by giving permissions to API keys. So for example the service can be the facebook API and a client can be an application developed by Zynga e.g. Farmville. When you allow to the client to post on your news feed that you just harvested 100000 crops on your farm, then it sends a request about this to the facebook API and so some automated message will show up on your news feed.
Ofc. you can write a 1st party AJAX or server side client if you want, but if you don't want to support 3rd party clients, then it does not make much sense to develop a REST service. Ofc. your client won't break as easy as by regular applications, so it might worth the effort if that is important.
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 two things. A backend running on App Engine and a Android app. These needs to communicate in a efficient way.
What I already did. I created a api with Google Cloud Endpoints. This endpoint exposes calls. The objects in the backend are mapped to json and mapped back to objects in the Android app. This is what the Endpoints provide.
Sometimes I want to push information from the backend to the Android app. What I do now is I send a Google Cloud Message (GCM) to the Android app and these is updating everything by calling something on the Endpoint of the backend.
This situation is working without problems but it has some drawbacks:
When I update a lot of devices at ones (what is happening a lot in my application) all those devices make a call to the backend and creating a large peak load.
The extra call is using additional battery on the phones.
What I want is to add the updated information into the GCM. GCM has support to add 4kB of data. Large enough to add the json with the updated information. If I want to send more then 4kB I can always use the old situation.
So, basicly what I want is the following:
When I'm going to send a GCM I retrieve the the correct objects from datastore/database.
Those objects needs to be converted to json in the same way as the Endpoint library does.
The json should be added to the GCM.
In the Android application the json should be convert back to objects in the same way as the Endpoint library does.
Continue processing those object the same way as before.
I found a thread that suggested that I should the gson library to do this. But I have problems in both backend and Android app. And also the json itself is not the same. I want to use the Endpoint library to serialize the same json and to deserialize to the same result as a Endpoint call.
Does anybody have any idea how to do that? Maybe a example or tutorial?
Once I have created my Web App with Zend2 , zfcUser and bjyAuthorize it's time to create the mobile App.
Our approach is to create and app with a json interaction with the Zend2 background.
The problem is that I don't know where to start in order to deal with a jSon Auth. Is possible wit zfcUser? any example out there?
Thanks in advance
ZfcUser module provides support for additional authentication mechanisms via plugins (Google, Facebook, LDAP, etc), but this feature seems to be in development now.
If you need that your mobile application to authenticate through some custom protocol based on JSON format, all you have to do is to create a controller action (say, mobileAuthAction()) which takes a JSON array with user credentials from POST, uses zfcUser API to authenticate the user, and return the response in JSON format. You may also look at view_manager configuration key to adjust the rendering strategy for your action to allow it to return JSON. Alternatively, you may call the $viewModel->setTerminal(false) to disable the layout rendering and echo your JSON to standard output.
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.