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[fit] Building API Servers


API Servers are one of the fundamental ways we build full stack applications


Roles of the API Server

  • Present a consistent, well thought out, series of API Endpoints (URLs) to allow interaction with data.
  • Interact with all the necessary data sources. Primarily, but not limited to, databases.
  • Provide authentication to ensure users are who they say they are.
  • Provide authorization to ensure users are restricted based on their roles.

Our API Servers will be HTTP based

  • Just as we have for API Clients our main mode of communication will be HTTP.
  • We will be using existing dotnet libraries to provide HTTP services.

Introducing ASP.NET

The existing library we are going to use is named ASP.NET and provides services to:

  • Read incoming HTTP requests from clients.
  • "Route" them based on the URL to the right bit of code to run to "handle" the request.
  • Serialize and Deserialize JSON information.
  • Provide for generating the correct headers including status codes.

A different mode of coding

In the applications we have written to date our code runs linearly from a Program.cs file.

For an API Server there is no Main application and no linear code.

The API Server "waits" for a connection from a client and then calls our code.

In this way our entire program becomes asynchronous and broken into small methods that handle a specific URL


Introducing a new .NET template

So far we have used sdg-console to create our application. For today's lecture we will use one that configures our code to interact with HTTP clients.

dotnet new sdg-api -o BasicAPI

FILES! FILES EVERYWHERE!

In this template there are many files. We'll look at a few of them to review what they do.


appsettings.Development.json
appsettings.json
BasicAPI.csproj
Program.cs
Startup.cs
Controllers/
Models/

appsettings.json and appsettings.Development.json

These files configure certain features such as logging (we'll talk more about logging later) and which hosts (computers) are allowed to connect.


Startup.cs

This file controls the startup part of our system that handles receiving requests from clients and sending results. Let's walk through the code and discuss all the important pieces.


Program.cs

We still have a familiar Program.cs but in this case the file is filled with code that we will not be editing.

This code exists to startup the API Server, connect it to the listing port and begin accepting requests from clients.


So where does our code go?

The main place we write code in an API Server is in a Controller


Introducing MVC

  • M - Model
  • V - View
  • C - Controller

Introducing MVC

  • M - Model -- Our data
  • V - View -- How our data is serialized and deserialized
  • C - Controller -- Code that is a "traffic cop" that sits between the view and the model.

MVC

+--------+ +------------+ +--------+
| Client | ====> Request ====> | Controller | ======> | Models |
+--------+ +------------+ +--------+
|
|
|
+--------+ +------+ +------------+ |
| Client | <==== | View | <==== | Controller | <===========+
+--------+ +------+ +------------+

Let's build our first API Controller!

Luckily we have a handy tool we can use to build out the template of a new controller for us!

NOTE: This should be run on ONE LINE. It is split here for readability

dotnet aspnet-codegenerator controller
-api -name HelloWorldController --relativeFolderPath Controllers

Breaking down the command

Name of the tool
|
| What to generate
| |
v v
dotnet aspnet-codegenerator controller
Request an API style controller
|
| Name of the controller
| |
| | What folder to place the generated controller code
| | |
v v v
-api -name HelloWorldController --relativeFolderPath Controllers

What does it generate?

namespace BasicAPI.Controllers
{
[Route("api/[controller]")]
[ApiController]
public class HelloWorldController : ControllerBase
{
}
}

Breaking it down


Namespace

namespace BasicAPI.Controllers

We keep our various code in namespaces to organize our code. By placing code in various namespaces we can avoid an issue when two classes might need the same name.

It also gives us a hint as to the purpose of the code defined within.


Annotations

This annotation tells ASP.NET that this class is a "Controller".

When our application starts up ASP.NET will look for all the controllers that can possibly handle a request.

[ApiController]

Annotations

This annotation tells ASP.NET what the URL is that the controller should handle.

The text within the () tells the path of the URL.

There is a shortcut. [controller] means: "Take the name of the class without Controller and put it here"

Thus this controller will respond to all requests that start with api/HelloWorld

[Route("api/[controller]")]

The Controller class

This is the class in which we will write the code to handle various requests.

By inheriting from ControllerBase we get all the abilities of an ASP.NET controller.

We will see some of those abilities soon.

public class HelloWorldController : ControllerBase
{
}

Handling our first request!

The simplest thing we can possibly do is the equivalent of the first C# program we wrote.

Hello World

We will make our controller, when it receives a GET request at api/HelloWorld just say "Hello, World." to us.


Our first request handler!

[HttpGet]
public string SayHello()
{
return "Hello, World.";
}

Most of this code looks familiar.

  • We are defining a public method that returns a string
  • It is named SayHello
  • Its work is to simply return the string "Hello, World."

Annotations to indicate the specifics of the URL

[HttpGet]

In this case we annotate the method to say "If the request is a GET, and is the base URL of api/HelloWorld" then please call this code to handle the request.


The return value becomes the response!

In this case we told ASP.NET that this code returns a simple string and that will become the response of our request!


Let's run this and see it work

dotnet watch run

What do we see?

watch : Started
Hosting environment: Development
Content root path: /Users/gstark/tmp/BasicAPI
Now listening on: http://localhost:5000
Now listening on: https://localhost:5001
Application started. Press Ctrl+C to shut down.

Well this is different!

Our app is not going to interact with the console anymore. Goodbye Console.WriteLine

Instead our app is telling us that it is running a Server and we can see it on the URL http://localhost:5000


localhost?

localhost is the special DNS name that always means "My local computer"

And in this case the :5000 means we are going to speak to the service running on Port 5000 which is where our code is awaiting requests


Fire up FireFox

Start Firefox and visit http://localhost:5000 in our browser.

We will see Swagger an API documentation system show us that we have one URL that our code knows how to handle!

Look! It is /api/HelloWorld

Let's put that in our browser.

right fit


fit


[fit] Change the message and refresh!


Making our response more dynamic.

If we want to see different data coming back for each request, let's include the current date and time in the greeting.

We change the implementation of the method to:

[HttpGet]
public string SayHello()
{
return $"Hello, World. It is currently {DateTime.Now}";
}

Accepting input

We know that we can send information to an API with query parameters

These are parts of the URL after a ? and are key-value pairs separated by = signs.

Our requests will now look like

/api/HelloWorld?who=Sandy

Adding query parameters

We said calling APIs are a little like calling methods.

To add a query parameter, we add an argument to the method with the same name as the query parameter and with the needed data type.

In this case:

  • Query parameter name: who
  • Query parameter type: string

[HttpGet]
public string SayHello(string who)
{
return $"Hello, {who}. It is currently {DateTime.Now}";
}

Example

If you use the URL https://localhost:5001/helloworld?who=Paula you will receive back the message

Hello, Paula. It is currently 4/28/2020 10:15:30 PM

(except you'll see the current date and time)


What if we didn't send a query parameter?

In this case there won't be any who to process so C# will make that variable null

Let's add code to handle that case:


[HttpGet]
public string SayHello(string who)
{
string whoOrWorld;
if (who == null)
{
whoOrWorld = "World";
} else {
whoOrWorld = who;
}
return $"Hello, {whoOrWorld}. It is currently {DateTime.Now}";
}

Taking it up a notch!

The other way we discussed giving information to an API was as part of the URL itself.

Let's make an API for rolling die

We will start with making an endpoint /api/Dice.

To follow our convention we will make a DiceController.cs file (e.g. the dice from /api/Dice is converted to CamelCase and we tack on Controller) and inside we define a DiceController class.


Generator!

dotnet aspnet-codegenerator controller -name DiceController -api --relativeFolderPath Controllers

Define a handler for GET

[HttpGet("{sides}")]
public int Roll(int sides)
{

In this case we are telling the controller that there is information INSIDE the URL itself.

The ("{sides}") means

Right after the end of the URL comes some important information. Whatever is there please put in an argument named sides


Sample URLs

/api/Dice/6
/api/Dice/8
/api/Dice/12
/api/Dice/20

Finish the code to roll!

[HttpGet("{sides}")]
public int Roll(int sides)
{
// Make a random number generator
var randomNumberGenerator = new Random();
// Next(sides) would make a number between 0 and just less than sides
// so return that number plus one. Making the range from 1 to a number
// INCLUDING the value of sides.
var roll = randomNumberGenerator.Next(sides) + 1;
return roll;
}

Return value

But wait, this time we are returning an int -- what are we going to get in the browser?


http://localhost:5000/api/Dice/6


[fit] JSON!

right fit


Rolling multiple die!

Let's combine the URL pattern with a query parameter of the number of die we wish to roll. So our URL will look like /api/Dice/6?count=4 to roll 4 die with 6 sides.


Add the query parameter

First let's add the query parameter to our arguments:

public int Roll(int sides, int count)

Change the return type

Since we will be returning more than one value we will change our return type.

Since we are returning a collection of integers, we'll return a List<int>.

In our method we will create a new List and then populate many random rolls of the die.


[HttpGet("{sides}")]
// int sides -- comes from {sides} in the HttpGet
// int count -- comes from a query parameter
public List<int> Roll(int sides, int count)
{

Finish the code

In our method we will create a new List and then populate many random rolls of the die.

Finally, we will return the list of rolls.


[HttpGet("{sides}")]
// int sides -- comes from {sides} in the HttpGet
// int count -- comes from a query parameter
public List<int> Roll(int sides, int count)
{
// Make a new list to store our integer rolls
var rolls = new List<int>();
// Make a random number generator
var randomNumberGenerator = new Random();
// Loop _count_ times
for (var rollNumber = 0; rollNumber < count; rollNumber++)
{
// Grab a random roll between 1 and sides
var roll = randomNumberGenerator.Next(sides) + 1;
// Add that roll to the list
rolls.Add(roll);
}
// Return the list
return rolls;
}

/api/Dice/6?count=4

fit inline


The result is a JSON formatted array of four random numbers representing our die rolls.

Let's try generating more rolls by increasing the count= or alter the number of sides of the die.


What if we don't provide a count?

What happens if no count is given?

If for instance you use https://localhost:5001/api/Dice/20?

Oops, we get back an empty array.

Luckily C# allows us to specify a default value for an argument if it is not supplied.


public List<int> Roll(int sides, int count = 1)

By changing this we now default to rolling a single die if a value is not supplied.


Conclusion

  • We have written our fist API controller.
  • We have written a handler for a GET request.
  • We have allowed input to be supplied with a query parameter.
  • We have allowed input to be supplied with a URL parameter.
  • We have returned JSON data, both a single number and an array of numbers
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