Web Api Services

Kanga api

2012-07-14T06:33:00.000-07:00

yup, I'm done with it. The kanga api project has started. It has been quite easy to play with this modeling platform published on CodePlex.

It's a nice project and they also expose an api in order to provide a services based software. But for educational purpose I've been playing around with the code and embedded it in an MVC4 Web Api project.
Also provided a method to visualize the diagram as encoded base64 background image. I'm still working on this. Not sure why the image doesn't show up, it could be a different way to encode it through my c# class

RGraphWebApi instructions #1

2012-07-12T08:34:00.000-07:00

First of all you should understand two things.

we need to automatize the way data ara loaded. Of course you can get your data from a db or any other repository but it was quite natural to me consider csv as the basic structure out of which data could be displayed. (the folder -repository- is App_Data\Series)
the structure is this:
- we do have a header, that is not accounted while the data are loaded by the application
  X;Y;XLabel;YLabel;Notes
- and rows of data according to the header
  12,00;;Jan;;notes for january

Now how do we go from this? It's quite simple:
we do have a class that has a property collection of DataPoint;
the property is called public List <DataPoint > SeriesPoints and can you guess what a DataPoint is?
Well, you can judge for yourself:
public class DataPoint
{
[Required]
public decimal X { get; set; }
public decimal? Y { get; set; }
[Required]
public string XLabel { get; set; }
public string YLabel { get; set; }
public string Notes { get; set; }
}

Elementary my dear Watson!!!

Web Api default xml formatter.

2012-07-10T06:06:00.001-07:00

The default formatter in the Mvc web api is an XML formatter.
To disable it, it's necessary to remove it from the default formatters.
In the Global.asax.cs (if we talk c#) you should add these lines of code:

// The Web API Configuration Object
var config = GlobalConfiguration.Configuration;
// Remove the XML Formatter
var xmlFormatter = config.Formatters
.Where(f =>
{
return f.SupportedMediaTypes.Any(v => v.MediaType == "text/xml");
})
.FirstOrDefault();

if (xmlFormatter != null)
{
config.Formatters.Remove(xmlFormatter);
}