I am developing an Asp Net Mvc client that is consuming Asp Net Web Api. For some reasons I decided to use System.Net.Http.HttpClient class, instead of jQuery AJAX to send data and get it back from the web api. So the outline of my application flow is this - an mvc controller, by using some service that wraps HttpClient within, gets the model from the web api, and then this model is passed to a View and gets displayed. The problem I am facing now is how can I provide real time data on my views using this approach? If I was using AJAX, I could make some asynchronous calls with some intervals to the web api server directly from a View and without reloading the page display the changes. Can I do it somehow using HttpClient? If not, what are some other alternatives that will align with the approach I chose to communicate with the web api?
Take a look at the simplified code I wrote to better describe my issue:
This is the controller:
public class UsersController : Controller
{
private readonly IUserHttpService _userHttpService;
public UsersController(IUserHttpService userHttpService)
{
_userHttpService = userHttpService;
}
public async Task<ActionResult> Index(int userId)
{
try
{
User user = await _userHttpService.GetUserById(userId);
return View(user);
}
//some simplified exception handling
catch (Exception)
{
return View("UnexpectedError");
}
}
}
This is UserHttpService:
public class UserHttpService : IUserHttpService
{
private const string _baseUri = "http://localhost/rs-webapi/api/users/";
public async Task<User> GetUserById(int userId)
{
string requestUri = $"{_baseUri}getuserbyid?userId={userId}";
//Here using HttpClient I fetch the data from web api
//(and I know that it's better to have one HttpClient for the whole app,
//it's just for the sake of simplicity)
using (HttpClient httpClient = new HttpClient())
{
HttpResponseMessage response = await httpClient.GetAsync(requestUri);
if (response.IsSuccessStatusCode)
{
return await response.Content.ReadAsAsync<User>();
}
else
{
throw new System.Exception("Something went wrong");
}
}
}
}
And this is the View:
@model Entities.Entities.UserBase
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width" />
<title>Index</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>First name: @Model.FirstName, Last name: @Model.LastName</p>
</body>
</html>
Now if the user first name or last name changes, I would like to be able to display it without reloading the page. What are my options?
