Question

I am trying to implement a remote REST service which is used to handle all logic for my MVC3 web application, and so far I am able to retrieve the serialized object from the webservice, but I am stuck on deserializing the object into my ViewModel to pass to the View.

Here is my controller:

[HttpGet]
public ActionResult Index()
{
    string versions;
    using (var webClient = new WebClient())
    {
        versions = webClient.DownloadString("http://myservice/GetVersions");
    }

    // deserialize JSON/XML somehow...
    //IEnumerable<VersionViewModel> model = ?

    return View(model);
}

What do I need to do to convert the JSON I recieve from the webservice to a ViewModel to render my view? Thanks.

Answer 1

You could use RestSharp for the initial request, which should be able to automatically convert the JSON to a suitable data transfer object (DTO). From there, you could use something like AutoMapper to convert from DTO -> ViewModel class.

The DTO (without knowing what your JSON looks like, of course):

public class VersionDto
{
     public string Name { get; set; }
     public string Version { get; set; }
}

The final result something like:

[HttpGet]
public ActionResult Index()
{
    var client = new RestClient ("http://myservice");
    List<VersionDto> versions = client.Execute<List<VersionDto>> (new RestRequest ("/GetVersions"));

    var vms = Mapper.Map<IEnumerable<VersionDto>, IEnumerable<VersionViewModel>> (versions);

    return View(vms);
}

The RestSharp wiki has lots of docs on how it maps the JSON onto your DTO classes, letting you worry less about serialization, and more about your business logic.