CardboardBox.Http

Extension to HttpClientFactory that exposes common Http Request methods.

Upgrading? Be sure to check the Breaking Changes section for any changes that might affect your code.

Installation

You can install the NuGet package within Visual Studio. It targets .net standard 2.1.

PM> Install-Package CardboardBox.Http

Dependencies

This library depends on the IJsonService provided in CardboardBox.Json and will need to be provided in the dependency injection setup. By default the library will use the System.Text.Json library for serialization and deserialization. This can be changed by providing a custom implementation of IJsonService in the dependency injection setup. There is also a default implementation of IJsonService provided in CardboardBox.Json that uses Newtonsoft.Json for serialization and deserialization.

You will need to use one of the following to register the IJsonService in the dependency injection setup:

using CardboardBox.Json;
using Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection;
...
//Uses System.Text.Json (You can pass in a custom JsonSerializerOptions instance)
services.AddJson(); 

//Uses Newtonsoft.Json (you'll need to include the ``CardboardBox.Json.Newtonsoft`` package)
services.AddNewtonsoftJson(); 

//Alternatively you can provide your own implementation of IJsonService
services.AddJson<MyCustomJsonService>();

Setup

You can setup the Api Client using the following code:

Where ever you register your services with Dependency Injection, you can add:

using CardboardBox.Http;
using Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection;
...
services.AddCardboardHttp();

This will register the IHttpClientFactory as well as all of the other dependencies necessary for handling CardboardBox.Http.

Usage

Once CardboardBox.Http is registered with your service collection you can inject the IApiService into any of your services and get access to all of the default methods

using CardboardBox.Http;

namespace ExampleHttp;

public class SomeService(IApiService _api)
{
  public Task<SomeModel> GetSomething()
  {
    return _api.Get<SomeModel>("https://example.org");
  }
}

Breaking Changes

2.x.x >> 3.x.x

There were some base changes in 3.x.x that might break anyone using 2.x versions:

Caching Removed

There were some default caching methods in 2.x that were removed as they were causing issues with some of the new changes and they were hardly used by the people I surveyed. If you need caching, you can implement it yourself by extending the IApiService interface and adding your own caching logic.

Config Callback Changed

There are now various other things you can configure on the IHttpBuilder outside of just the HttpRequestMessage, as such, the config parameter on all of the request methods in the IApiService have changed from Action<HttpRequestMessage> to Action<IHttpBuilderConfig>. You can pipe your old configurations to the IHttpBuilderConfig.Message() method to get the same behavior.

Newtonsoft.Json Removed

The underlying CardboardBox.Json package no longer implements a service for Newtonsoft.Json directly, so if you're using you will need to include the CardboardBox.Json.Newtonsoft package and register the service with it's extension method: IServiceCollection.AddNewtonsoftJson(). This is to reduce the number of dependencies that are included by default and to resolve some virus scanning issues that were reporting false positives on the Newtonsoft.Json package.

You should also consider moving to System.Text.Json as it's the new implementation for serialization in .net core and is faster than Newtonsoft.Json.

Config Options Moved to Extensions

Various configuration methods on IHttpBuilder have been moved to extension methods to simplify the builder and reduce the number of methods that need to be implemented when rolling your own HttpBuilder implementation.

The only configuration option that's signature has changed is the IHttpBuilder.With(Action<HttpRequestMessage>) method, which has been changed to IHttpBuilder.With(Action<IHttpBuilderConfig>). If you want the same behavior as before, you can use the IHttpBuilder.Message(Action<HttpRequestMessage>) method instead.

Api Methods Moved to Extensions

The API call methods on the IApiService have been moved to extension methods to simplify the code and commenting. You can still configure the IApiService.Create() method to change the default behavior of the IHttpBuilder if you need to. Also, the GenerateUri methods have been moved to the IHttpBuilder interface as extension methods.

1.x.x >> 2.x.x

There were some base changes in 2.0 that might break anyone using 1.x versions:

Fail Gracefully

In version 1.x, by default FailGracefully was enabled on all requests. This would make it so if the request failed with a status code outside of the 200 range, it would just return null. This has been turned off by default in 2.0.0. If you want to turn it back on, you can chain the .FailGracefully() builder on any IHttpBuilder or override the Create() method on the IApiService.

Fail With Throw

There is now a FailWithThrow option on the IHttpBuilder that allows for toggling the FailGracefully option, this previously didn't exist and was an oversight on my part.

Dependencies

The auto-inclusion of the CardboardBox.Json services in the dependency injection handler has been removed. You will need to manually add the CardboardBox.Json package to your dependency injection handler otherwise you will receive an error trying to resolve the IApiService. See the section in the installation instructions for more information.