Return a string to be displayed on a View from Restful API

Question

I have an image of a barcode that I submit to a form. The image is posted to a restful API. The API receives the image, processes the image and throws an exception or returns a string of the barcode from the image.

Below is a snippet of my code

View -

<form name="somename" method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data"
    action="/api/decoder">
    <input type="file" name="ImageToDecode" accept="image/*" capture="camera" />
    <input type="submit" value="Get Barcode..." />
< /form>

Api -

public class DecodeImageController : ApiController
{
    public string Post()
    {
        var postedImage = HttpContext.Current.Request; // get the posted image

        // do some stuff in here to read the barcode from the image
        if (!could read image)
        {
            return barcode.ToString();
        }

        // barcode could not be found
        throw new Exception("Barcode could not be read");   
    }   // end post method
}

I am using Visual Studio 2013 MVC project. The API and the View are both in separate projects. This is what gets returned.

This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.

<string xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/">10320972351</string>

This works fine, but now I want to call the API and have the returned barcode to my Controller.

Any direction would be helpful.

I am continuing to work on this as ideas pop into my head.

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 17 '14 at 06:13

0

This response is correct. You synchronously post form and receive correct answer.

The solution - use Json to exchange data and use jquery like $.post to send asynchronous query and perform required actions in success method of $.post

answered Sep 17 '14 at 06:13

Vladmir

1,255
9
13

Is there a way to post image via ajax? Probably he can use [malsup plugin](http://malsup.com/jquery/form/) to post image via ajax and get response in json. – Mihir Sep 17 '14 at 06:20

score 0 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:34

0

In addition to @Vladmir's answer...

You can configure your API to return string in json data type, however you will need to add formatter to return json response from API. Refer this post How do I get ASP.NET Web API to return JSON instead of XML using Chrome? to know how to add formatter.

After that you can use malsup jquery plugin to post your image to API via ajax with content type "text/html" would result barcode value in json.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:34

Community

1
1

answered Sep 17 '14 at 06:26

Mihir

419
3
10

thanks. I managed to get the API to return a Json(string) and added the formatter in the WebApiConfig. The API now returns json rather than xml – Donald Sep 18 '14 at 01:26

Return a string to be displayed on a View from Restful API

2 Answers2