Consuming REST based web services in .Net

Question

Greetings,

I'm confused as to the best approach to make when consuming REST based web services with .Net. At the moment I'm using the System.net.webclient class. Should I be using Webresponse, webrequest classes in System.Net ?

If I were to use another approach (Other than webclient) what disadvantages / advantages would I gain ?

Thanks,

Answer 1

If you use the WCF REST starter kit, there's pretty much no technical downside. There's a learning curve, however, and it will only work if you have .Net 3.5 SP1 (so I guess that's the down side).

Answer 2

You can also see this link if you want to do it without WCF.

Answer 3

i found this post hope be useful for u

http://blog.flair-systems.com/2010/05/how-to-consume-rest-based-services.html

Q. How to consume REST based-services?

Assume we have REST based-service contains method Add which takes two operands op1 and op2 and return the summation.

A) Create any project type (Console, Windows or even Web-based application) and add the below lines :

Code Snippet

1. using System.Net;
2. using System.IO;

B) Write some code to consume the service:

Code Snippet

1. string parameters;
2. string response;
3. // Create the request obj
4. WebRequest request = WebRequest.Create("serviceURL/Add");
5. // Set values for the request back
6. request.Method = "POST"; //REST based-services using Post method
7. request.ContentType = "application/json"; //tells request the content typs is JSON
8. parameters = "{\"op1\":2,\"op2\":\"1\"}";
9. request.ContentLength = parameters.Length;
   1. // Write the request
   2. StreamWriter requestWriter = new StreamWriter(request.GetRequestStream(), System.Text.Encoding.ASCII);
   3. requestWriter.Write(parameters);
   4. requestWriter.Close();
   5. // Do the request to get the response
   6. StreamReader responseReader = new StreamReader(request.GetResponse().GetResponseStream());
   7. response = responseReader.ReadToEnd();
   8. responseReader.Close();

Response value should be 3 if you implement Add method correctly :))