Is there a better way to consume an ASP.NET Web API call in an MVC controller?
- by davidisawesome
In a new project I am creating for my work I am creating a fairly large ASP.NET Web API. The api will be in a separate visual studio solution that also contains all of my business logic and database interactions, Model classes as well.
In the test application I am creating (which is asp.net mvc4), I want to be able to hit an api url I defined from the control and cast the return JSON to a Model class. The reason behind this is that I want to take advantage of strongly typing my views to a Model. This is all still in a proof of concept stage, so I have not done any performance testing on it, but I am curious if what I am doing is a good practice, or if I am crazy for even going down this route.
Here is the code on the client controller:
public class HomeController : Controller
{
protected string dashboardUrlBase = "http://localhost/webapi/api/StudentDashboard/";
public ActionResult Index() //This view is strongly typed against User
{
//testing against Joe Bob
string adSAMName = "jBob";
WebClient client = new WebClient();
string url = dashboardUrlBase + "GetUserRecord?userName=" + adSAMName;
//'User' is a Model class that I have defined.
User result = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<User>(client.DownloadString(url));
return View(result);
}
. . .
}
If I choose to go this route another thing to note is I am loading several partial views in this page (as I will also do in subsequent pages). The partial views are loaded via an $.ajax call that hits this controller and does basically the same thing as the code above:
Instantiate a new WebClient
Define the Url to hit
Deserialize the result and cast it to a Model Class.
So it is possible (and likely) I could be performing the same actions 4-5 times for a single page.
Is there a better method to do this that will:
Let me keep strongly typed views.
Do my work on the server rather than on the client (this is just a preference since I can write C# faster than I can write javascript).
