Should I use WebApi for this? ASP.net MVC

Question

I have a question about MVC asp.net I have a link that provides a data using HTTP in this XML format

 [...]
    <Item>
    <Name>Money</Name>
    <Unit>1000</Unit>
    </Item>
 [...]

If I want this to display data on view in my application - what should I use? WebAPI? The data ( < unit > ) change every few minutes, so always view have to display the current data.

Data are also possible to get in JSON format.

Answer 1

To clear up the confusion from all existing answers and comments: your actual problem statement is this:

I have a third-party URL that when requested, gives you some JSON which I wish to display in a table on an MVC view.

This is very trivial. See Deserializing JSON into an object to generate classes to deserialize the JSON. This provides you with a statically typed class that you can use from code.

Then you define a view model to hold a list of items:

public class JsonViewModel
{
    public List<JsonItem> Items { get; set; }
}

public class JsonItem
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string Unit { get; set; }
}

And in the controller you perform an HTTP GET request to retrieve the JSON (HTTP GET request and XML answer), parse it, map it to your view model and return it to your view:

public class FooController : Controller
{
    public ActionResult Index()
    {
        // 1. Perform HTTP request to retrieve the JSON.
        var webClient = new WebClient();
        string rawJson = webClient.DownloadString("json-url");

        // 2. Parse the JSON.
        var jsonRootObject = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<JsonRootObject>(rawJson);

        // 3. Map to your viewmodel
        var viewModel = new JsonViewModel
        {
            Items = jsonRootObject.Items.Select(i => new JsonItem
            {
                Name = i.Name,
                Unit = i.Unit
            }).ToList()
        };

        // 4. Return the model to your view
        return View(viewModel);
    }
}

Then finally you render the model in your view:

@model JsonViewModel

<table>
    <tr>
        <th>Name</th><th>Unit</th></tr>
    </tr>
@foreach (var item in Model.Items)
{
    <tr>
        <td>@item.Name</td><td>@item.Unit</td>
    </tr>
}
</table>

Answer 2

In your controller, call the external service to get the data. Can be XML, but JSON is more lightweight; I'd go for that. Parse the data into a view model that you then pass to the view. The view model contains the parsed information in the format that is best suited for your view; this will make sure your view can be kept as simple as possible (focusing on view logic).

To keep your controllers light, you might want to decide to move the retrieval and parsing logic in dedicated components, and use those from within your controller.

Answer 3

Basically, what to use - JSON or View - is fully up to you and depends on your knowledges.

You can reach what you need here using JSON(or even XML) and js code in the page, or partial view and less js code.

I'd suggest you to return partial view from your MVC controller and update whole block.

Answer 4

I prefer Json instead of Xml because it is lightweight, so... you can go through three different ways:

1. Create a method that returns a JsonResult in your Controller (that is what i think you are doing) inside your asp.net mvc application;
2. Create a WebApiController inside your asp.net mvc application just to have the web api stuff without creating a new application;
3. Create a Web Api application and return your data (if you need only one service, i don't think you should create a new app for that, it is too much work)

If you choose the third option and you are not familliar with Web Api, i will recommend you to read this.

Answer 5

You can simply use a periodic ajax call using setInterval to the 3rd party endpoint and then update your view accordingly. A better approach would be to use MVVM so you just need to update the view model and the framework will do the rest.

If you want to decouple your site from the 3rd party or you just want to hide that 3rd party address, You can use Web Api to call the 3rd party endpoint and call the web api endpoint from the client. You will need to handle CORS this way, if the web api is in a different domain.

You can also use mvc action instead of the web api but if you're planning on building large scale application. It's better that you start using SOA Architecture.