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    • What is Zebble?
    • Structure of a Zebble solution
    • Zebble Designer (UWP)
    • Installing - Introduction
    • Change log
    • Introduction
    • ViewModel development
    • VM.EXE
    • View development
    • Dialogs
    • Lists and Collections
    • Tips and shortcuts
    • List views
    • ViewModel testing
    • Automatic Views
    • View development process
    • Hello World - Core Concepts
    • Layout: Sizing & Positioning
    • Event handling
    • Navigation
    • Alerts, Dialog, Prompt and toast
    • View lifecycle
    • Managing Files & Resources
    • Config & Debugging
    • Forms
    • Page templates
    • Device API
    • Animations
    • Web Api - Part 1 (reading data)
    • Web Api - Part 2 (post and delete)
    • Web Api - Part 3 (server vs client domain model)
    • Gesture events
    • View class
    • Zebble Markup (.zbl files)
    • Data Binding and MVVM
    • Stack class
    • Sizing and positioning
    • Layout examples
    • ScrollView class
    • Page class
    • Styling in Zebble
    • CSS property mapping to Zebble
    • Supported selectors
    • Zebble CSS: Under the hood
    • Inline styling
    • CSS real-time updates
    • Dynamic expressions in CSS
    • Gradient background colours
    • CSS Pseudo-classes support
    • Using Bold and Light Fonts in Zebble
    • Rotation in Zebble
    • Using custom fonts in Zebble
    • Flashing on tap using AutoFlash
    • Button
    • Carousel class
    • Checkbox class
    • DatePicker
    • Drawing class
    • FilePicker class
    • Grid class
    • IconButton class
    • ImageView
    • ItemPicker class
    • ListView & Grid classes
    • OptionsList
    • SearchInput class
    • Slider class
    • Switch class
    • Tabs Class
    • TextInput class
    • TextView
    • TimePicker
    • TreeView
    • Waiting Indicator
    • WebView class (displaying html)
    • C# Methods and Properties Of UI Components
    • Nav.Forward() vs Nav.Go()
    • Passing parameters to the destination page
    • Going Back
    • Showing Popup pages
    • Waiting class
    • Hardware Back button (e.g. Android)
    • NavigationBar class
    • Tabs class
    • Caching (pages)
    • Navigation without event handler
    • Use the Windows version
    • Logging messages for Debugging
    • Debugging Zebble/Plugin
    • Exception handling in Zebble
    • Debugging layout and styles
    • Zebble Device API
    • Device.Screen and orientation (landscape | portrait)
    • Code that should run on a specific platform
    • Using Lamp (aka Flash, LED and Torch)
    • Using Compass (Smooth compass)
    • Using Accelerometer (device angle)
    • Using Gyroscope (device motion speed)
    • How to Vibrate the device?
    • Launching the device browser
    • Finding device model and manufacturer
    • Responding to System events
    • Handling device shake event
    • Permissions
    • Permissions declaration (manifest files)
    • Sharing
    • Prompt for rating the app
    • Finding if Internet connection is available
    • Device messaging (Make a phone call, send SMS or Email)
    • Showing a local notification
    • Copying to Clipboard
    • Accessing device contacts
    • Reading and writing into Gallery (albums)
    • Playing & Recording Audio
    • Cache and temp files and folders
    • C# async / await
    • Understanding Zebble Threading
    • Debugging - the StackTrace problem
    • Not awaiting (running in parallel)
    • Timer (interval / scheduled running)
    • Post-render changes to the UI (dynamic)
    • Introduction of Geo location
    • Map & Location Services
    • Launch directions to a location (external)
    • Getting current Location
    • Tracking user location
    • Device.Media: Taking and picking photos
    • Playing an audio file
    • VideoPlayer class
    • Augmented reality
    • Recording audio
    • Virtual Reality
    • Speech Recognition
    • Recording or picking video
    • Playing remote videos in iOS
    • Text to speech
    • Introduction to the importance of Mobile Testing
    • Why and what to test
    • Testing mobile apps on different devices
    • Testing mobile apps
    • Xamarin Profiler
    • Performance optimization
    • Moving a view to another container at run-time
    • Attaching custom data (tag) to objects
    • Saving a view as image
    • Naming best practices
    • Fastest way to update your nuget package
    • Tips for Clean and Brief code
    • Splash screen and icon generation
    • Advice for passing Approval
    • Options for iOS app distribution
    • Test Release (internal and UAT)
    • Application Icons in IOS
    • Submitting to App Store
    • Releasing to App Store
    • Crash reporting
    • Optimized Release Build
    • Android - Generating an APK for manual installation
    • Payment (subscriptions & in-app purchases)
    • Introduction to push notifications
    • Registration process (App)
    • Push notification setup - iOS
    • Push notification setup - Android
    • Push notification setup - Windows
    • Sending a push message from the web app
    • Introduction
    • Connecting Zebble to Web API
    • Installation
    • Creating an API class
    • GET APIs
    • Calling a GET API (in the mobile app)
    • POST, PUT, PATCH and DELETE APIs
    • Domain Model
    • Web API and Authentication
    • Versioning
    • Uniquely identifying installations (token)
    • Settings file: config.xml
    • Standard Zebble settings
    • Login/Register with Facebook
    • Creating a composite component / plugin
    • Creating a Zebble component using Html and Javascript
    • CustomRenderedView: Third-party native components / plugins
    • Mapbox
    • Naming considerations
    • Random problems?
    • Display Keyboard for Visual Studio Android Emulator
    • iOS goes mad?
    • Configuring a Windows phone for ad-hoc testing
    • Fixing Error DEP0001 : Unexpected Error: -2147009287 while deploying Windows UWP app on device
    • Fixing Error DEP0001 : Unexpected Error: -1988945906 while deploying Windows UWP app on device
    • Unable tp Connect to the Mac agent from Visual Studio
    • Can't connect to the Mac agent from Visual Studio?
    • Choosing the CPU architecture
    • Zebble CLI
    • How to add a Device API to Zebble source?
    • About Automated UI testing
    • What should we test in mobile applications?
    • Creating an Automated UI Test in Zebble



Connecting Zebble to Web API


In the .Net world, your application will usually be an ASP.NET MVC application hosted in the internet, perhaps in SQL Server database to hosted data. In the ASP.NET application you will have all the usually suspect like business logic class, services, data access layer and etc.

But you will also have ASP.NET Web API controllers to enable the App to connect to server to send and receive data.
In addition to that, many applications will also have a UI as part of the same application to provide Admin and content editing features for the client App owner.

The UI components can simply be MVC Controllers and be used utilize in the same database business logic and service classes that they are used by API controllers.

 



Of course in the same MVC application, they can be web pages for the end users interact with the platform through the browser too.
Obviously many serious digital businesses come with a web base version and in addition to the native app. So that are more accessible and usable by their market.

This is how you can use the WEB API from Zebble applications.


Here we have a web api with the URL: https://My-domain.com/api/products which will return a JOSON of array of products.
Look at the server side api documentation later.
For now, we want to focus in the client-side coding in the mobile app.  


In the UI layer app, we have a page that show the list of products. Data source of that list module on that page will be called Domain name class product which has a static method name getList().
To implement the GetList() method, we will use the class in our project named Api: BaseApi which inherits from the base class in Zebble. The base Api class is effectively like simple an agent to send http request to the server with some useful features such as  exception handeling, cashing, offline supporting and etc.
Here is the implemention of GetList() method:

public static Task<Product[]> getList()
{
      return Api.Get<Product[]>("api/products");
}
In this code, the domain name is missed. It is determined in Config.XML file:

<Api.Base.Url value="https://My-domain.com" />You can use the URL in the parameter of Api.GET() method.

Caching the result
Get-based Web Apis are used to read data. When you invoke them for the first time, the situation is obvious in terms of error handling. But after a first successful call, if later on your app is calling the same URL again, the situation is different. In this example, they say that you have received a product's data from the Api once. If a few minutes later, the user goes back to product page, but this time there is no internet connection and so you can not get a fresh the list of products from the Api.

Instead of showing nothing or an error message perhaps, surely would be nicer to use the data that you previously received to give that functioning. So Cashing in this case would be great. Of course, in some other cases, this could call serious problems if the data you showing the user is not fresh. For example, it can confused the user or even call security or legally issues.




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Zebble is a product of Geeks Ltd , a software house based in London, UK. All rights are reserved.

Telephone: +44 (0)845 643 6229

Email: hello@zebble.net

Address: 66a London Road, Morden

Greater London, United Kingdom, SM4 5BE

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