Consuming Restful Web API in ASP.NET MVC?

Introduction

Web API has become integral part of the web development now and most of the services now are exposed via Web API as against Web Services. Web API mainly returns light weight JSON formatted data (it can also return XML) that can be easily converted into object and easily understood by JavaScript to manipulate and iterate. Web API is based on HTTP is very light weight and perform much better than Web Services where SOAP is used to transfer the data and convert back to request - response.

Using the code

To explain, how to consume external Web in ASP.NET MVC, we have a sample controller action method below.

public async System.Threading.Tasks.Task<ActionResult> ConsumeExternalAPI()
        {
            string url = "http://someurl.com//api/PersonalDetails/GetPersonalDetails";

            using (System.Net.Http.HttpClient client = new System.Net.Http.HttpClient())
            {
                client.BaseAddress = new Uri(url);
                client.DefaultRequestHeaders.Accept.Clear();
                client.DefaultRequestHeaders.Accept.Add(new System.Net.Http.Headers.MediaTypeWithQualityHeaderValue("application/json"));

                System.Net.Http.HttpResponseMessage response = await client.GetAsync(url);
                if (response.IsSuccessStatusCode)
                {
                    var data = await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();
                    var table = Newtonsoft.Json.JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<System.Data.DataTable>(data);

                    System.Web.UI.WebControls.GridView gView = new System.Web.UI.WebControls.GridView();
                    gView.DataSource = table;
                    gView.DataBind();
                    using (System.IO.StringWriter sw = new System.IO.StringWriter())
                    {
                        using (System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter htw = new System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter(sw))
                        {
                            gView.RenderControl(htw);
                            ViewBag.ReturnedData = sw.ToString();
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
            return View();
        }