Introduction

With the ever increasing number of API interfaces becoming available to allow us to utilize data from the external platforms into our Web or software Applications, I decided to create a simple but very useful helper class that will allow for the consumption of any XML or JSON request for deserialization into a class object of your choosing.

ApiWebRequestHelper Methods

As you can see from the code, given below, ApiRequestHelper class contains two methods:
  • GetJsonRequest()
  • GetXmlRequest()
These methods will allow you to pass an unknown type as well as the URL to API endpoint, where you are getting your data from. This makes things very straight-forward, when you want to strongly-type the data with ease.
  1. public class ApiWebRequestHelper
  2. {
  3. /// <summary>
  4. /// Gets a request from an external JSON formatted API and returns a deserialized object of data.
  5. /// </summary>
  6. /// <typeparam name="T"></typeparam>
  7. /// <param name="requestUrl"></param>
  8. /// <returns></returns>
  9. public static T GetJsonRequest<T>(string requestUrl)
  10. {
  11. try
  12. {
  13. WebRequest apiRequest = WebRequest.Create(requestUrl);
  14. HttpWebResponse apiResponse = (HttpWebResponse)apiRequest.GetResponse();
  16. if (apiResponse.StatusCode == HttpStatusCode.OK)
  17. {
  18. string jsonOutput;
  19. using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(apiResponse.GetResponseStream()))
  20. jsonOutput = sr.ReadToEnd();
  22. var jsResult = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<T>(jsonOutput);
  24. if (jsResult != null)
  25. return jsResult;
  26. else
  27. return default(T);
  28. }
  29. else
  30. {
  31. return default(T);
  32. }
  33. }
  34. catch (Exception ex)
  35. {
  36. // Log error here.
  38. return default(T);
  39. }
  40. }
  42. /// <summary>
  43. /// Gets a request from an external XML formatted API and returns a deserialized object of data.
  44. /// </summary>
  45. /// <typeparam name="T"></typeparam>
  46. /// <param name="requestUrl"></param>
  47. /// <returns></returns>
  48. public static T GetXmlRequest<T>(string requestUrl)
  49. {
  50. try
  51. {
  52. WebRequest apiRequest = WebRequest.Create(requestUrl);
  53. HttpWebResponse apiResponse = (HttpWebResponse)apiRequest.GetResponse();
  55. if (apiResponse.StatusCode == HttpStatusCode.OK)
  56. {
  57. string xmlOutput;
  58. using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(apiResponse.GetResponseStream()))
  59. xmlOutput = sr.ReadToEnd();
  61. XmlSerializer xmlSerialize = new XmlSerializer(typeof(T));
  63. var xmlResult = (T)xmlSerialize.Deserialize(new StringReader(xmlOutput));
  65. if (xmlResult != null)
  66. return xmlResult;
  67. else
  68. return default(T);
  69. }
  70. else
  71. {
  72. return default(T);
  73. }
  74. }
  75. catch (Exception ex)
  76. {
  77. // Log error here.
  78. return default(T);
  79. }
  80. }
  81. }
ApiWebRequestHelper class relies on the following namespaces:
  • Newtonsoft Json
  • System.Xml.Serialization
  • ​​System.IO
ApiWebRequestHelper can be used in the following way:
  1. // Get Json Request
  2. ApiWebRequestHelper.GetJsonRequest<MyJsonClassObject>("http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/api/result.json");
  4. // Get XML Request
  5. ApiWebRequestHelper.GetXmlRequest<MyXMLClassObject>("http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/api/result.xml");