From the box Unicorn.Backend provides with base rest service implementation which could help top send requests to the API and get responses.

Usage

Sending requests

To use the base functionality you need to create an instance of RestClient class and call SendRequest method. This method takes HttpMethod and endpoint as parameters and returns RestResponse object. Here is an example of how to use it:

using System.Net.Http;
using Unicorn.Backend.Services.RestService;

// Create new base client instance
RestClient client = new RestClient("https://reqres.in");

// Send get request to the API endpoint and get response object
RestResponse response = client.SendRequest(HttpMethod.Get, "/api/users/1");

RestResponse contains set of basic properties related to the response such as StatusCode, Content and Headers. You can use these properties to process the response data.

• ExecutionTime: request execution time
• Status: response status code
• StatusDescription: response status description
• Content: response content as string
• Headers: response headers as HttpResponseHeaders
• AsJObject: response content as JObject (Newtonsoft.Json library)

Donwload files

To download files you can use DownloadFile method. This method takes endpoint and destinationFolder as parameters and returns string with original filename. Filename is taken from Headers.ContentDisposition.FileNameStar, in case it’s not specified endpoint tail part is used as filename.

Here is an example of how to use it:

string fileName = new RestClient("https://some-url")
    .DownloadFile("/api/download-endpoint", "target_dir_path");

Custom API client

It’s possible to create custom API client based on RestClient class. You can override some properties and methods to customize behavior of the client. Here is an example of how to create custom API client:

public class DummyApiClient : RestClient
{
    // Initializing an instance of DummyApiClient calling base constructor with api base url.
    public DummyApiClient() : base("https://reqres.in")
    {
    }

    // disable auto-redirects for all requests made by this client.
    protected override bool AllowAutoRedirect => false;

    // set encoding to ASCII for all requests made by this client.
    protected override Encoding Encoding => Encoding.ASCII;

    // Call get on "/api/users/{id}" endpoint and receive a response
    public RestResponse GetUser(int id) =>
        SendRequest(HttpMethod.Get, $"/api/users/{id}");
}