Simple Web API Helper for Umbraco and MVC

A Simple Web API Helper

This post gives you the code to help you build an API url with the parameters and a quick way to call a simple get method and parse the results to the object you are expecting back from the API.

using Newtonsoft.Json;
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Net.Http;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

namespace SupplierPortal.Library.Helpers
{
    public class ApiHelper
    {
        public string BuildApiUrl(string domainAddress, string controllerName, string methodName, List<KeyValuePair<string, object>> parameters, string apiLocation)
        {
            StringBuilder url = new StringBuilder();
            url.Append($"{domainAddress}/{apiLocation}{controllerName}/{methodName}");
            if (parameters != null &amp;&amp; parameters.Count > 0)
            {
                int parameterCount = parameters.Count;
                for (int i = 0; i < parameterCount; i++)
                {
                    url.Append(i == 0 ? "?" : "&amp;");
                    url.Append($"{parameters[i].Key}={parameters[i].Value.ToString()}");
                }
            }
            return url.ToString();
        }

        public T GetResultFromApi<T>(string url)
        {
            using (HttpClient httpClient = new HttpClient())
            {
                Task<String> response = httpClient.GetStringAsync(url);
                return Task.Factory.StartNew(() => JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<T>(response.Result)).Result;
            }
        }
    }
}

Usage Example

And here is how you would call it.

using CodeShare.Library.Helpers;



var user = new HttpContextWrapper(HttpContext.Current).User;
            
List<KeyValuePair<string, object>> parameters = new List<KeyValuePair<string, object>>();
parameters.Add(new KeyValuePair<string, object>("username", user.Identity.Name));
parameters.Add(new KeyValuePair<string, object>("mediaPath", context.Request.FilePath));

ApiHelper apiHelper = new ApiHelper();

string url = apiHelper.BuildApiUrl(
    domainAddress: "http://www.example.com", 
    apiLocation: "Umbraco/Api/",
    controllerName: "ProtectedMediaApi",
    methodName: "IsAllowed", 
    parameters: parameters);

bool isAllowed = apiHelper.GetResultFromApi<bool>(url);</bool>