Access web api 2 app from windows phone 8 application - windows-phone-8

Question

I have a problem when I am trying to access my ASP.NET Web Api 2 application running on the localhost from windows phone 8 application. I have tried and looked for a lot examples how to do it but with no result. I tested my api using Fiddler and it works. I tested to access it from web application and it works but when I tried to access it from windows phone 8 app it doesn't. Can you tell me how to configure my windows phone 8 emulator to access it? Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

The emulator is a virtual machine so "localhost" inside your phone app means the emulator itself, not your host machine where you're running your web service. To access it, you have to provide the actual IP address of your host computer in the local network instead of "localhost". You can see what your IP is by running ipconfig in the cmd console.

Answer 2

here is a detail artical on accessing web api methods in Windows Phone 8
Calling Web API from a Windows Phone 8
to be specific here is how you get data from web API
string apiUrl = #"http://www.contoso.com/api/Books";
WebClient webClient = new WebClient();
webClient.Headers["Accept"] = "application/json";
webClient.DownloadStringCompleted += new DownloadStringCompletedEventHandler(webClient_DownloadCatalogCompleted);
webClient.DownloadStringAsync(new Uri(apiUrl));
private void webClient_DownloadCatalogCompleted(object sender, DownloadStringCompletedEventArgs e)
{
try
{
this.Items.Clear();
if (e.Result != null)
{
var books = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<BookDetails[]>(e.Result);
int id = 0;
foreach (BookDetails book in books)
{
this.Items.Add(new ItemViewModel()
{
ID = (id++).ToString(),
LineOne = book.Title,
LineTwo = book.Author,
LineThree = book.Description.Replace("\n", " ")
});
}
this.IsDataLoaded = true;
}
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
this.Items.Add(new ItemViewModel()
{
ID = "0",
LineOne = "An Error Occurred",
LineTwo = String.Format("The following exception occured: {0}", ex.Message),
LineThree = String.Format("Additional inner exception information: {0}", ex.InnerException.Message)
});
}
}
Hope this helps