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.
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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.
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.
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'm currently working in HTTP JSON API for a touristic webapp. The webapp will be developed by a third-party company and it'll consume the API within the browser.
So I need for the API some sort of authentication to the third-party webapp can consume it. I've been researching a little bit about OAuth, but with this, I have a solution for a user-wide but not for application-wide authorization.
Because the webapp will consume the API within the browser(with Ajax), I'm concerned they will have to put the credentials to consume the API in the user browser.
Another solution would be place the credentials for the API in the server-side, but this don't depend on me.
You could always use something similar to google's method, with a client ID and then a private key used to generate a signature.
https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/business/webservices#generating_valid_signatures
That page has some code samples as well.
Currently writing some documentation. Just wondering if we are using the terminology correctly.
We have an AJAX script that calls a service using a HTTP GET that returns JSON.
Would you call the service a REST service or a JSON service?
Using HTTP does not mean you're automatically following the REST architectural style. If you don't know what REST is, you're pretty much guaranteed to not be doing it. Call it "a web service that returns JSON" instead.
I'd call it a REST service which returns JSON.
EDIT
6 years on and what was I thinking! It's a web service which returns Json, as suggested in other answers. It may be RESTful, it may not.
A client calling a service using an HTTP GET would not constitute a RESTful architecture. The following elements should exist for a service that has a RESTful architecture.
HTTP - used as an application protocol, not a transport protocol
URI tunneling
Hypermedia
So, in your scenario, based on the given information, your service can be classified as a regular service with JSON hypermedia or content type. It is definetly not a REST architecture.
Here are some additional information:http://goo.gl/32gLK