How to call a DELETE REST API with a Body?

Question

User-94355476 posted

I have a situation where I must call a REST API DELETE endpoint which demands the filename to delete is specified in the Body as follows:

{
 "FileData":{
    "fileNameWithPath" : "MyFilename.html"
 }
}

In Postman this works fine and I get a 200 OK request when the file is deleted.  But in C#, no matter what I've tried, I keep getting a 500 Internal Error.

Any idea on how to do this properly in C#.NET?

Robert

Answer 1

User475983607 posted

In Postman this works fine and I get a 200 OK request when the file is deleted.  But in C#, no matter what I've tried, I keep getting a 500 Internal Error.

Any idea on how to do this properly in C#.NET?

I assume you have a client app written in C# that sends a DELETE request to web API but the Web API throws a 500 error.  Essentially the same service endpoint works when a request is sent from Postman but the same endpoint throws a 500 error when sent from custom C# code.

My knee jerk reaction is the JSON data sent form C# is not formatted the same as the Postman request.  Either debug the C# code or post the source so we can try to reproduce the issue.

Answer 2

User-94355476 posted

Thank you for responding.  Your message prompted me to carefully revisit my code (now after a good sleep).  I'm happy to report that it's now working.  In case this helps someone else, let me share the code.

Here is the successful Postman request: https://1drv.ms/i/s!AgOeDHlu5jFPnT6A5Tyr7lgMcLmN

Here is the now working version of my code:

        public static string DeleteFile(string userName, string repoName, string filename)
        {
            var client = new HttpClient();
            string data = "{ \"FileData\" : { \"fileNameWithPath\" : \"" + filename + "\"}}";
                    
            var requestUri = new Uri(new Uri(Common.WebApiUrl), "api/v1/microtech/" + userName + "/" + repoName + "/file");

            var result =
                client.SendAsync(
                new HttpRequestMessage(HttpMethod.Delete, requestUri)
                {
                    Content = new StringContent(data, Encoding.UTF8, "application/json")
                })
                .Result;

            return result.RequestMessage.ToString();
        }

In point of fact, there were two things wrong with my code:

1. The concatenation of 'data' was fouled up.
2. In the "Content = new StringContent ..." statement I was doubly encoding 'data' as JSON.  Not necessary.

Now everything works!  Thank you again for the inspiration!!

Answer 3

User475983607 posted
Keep in mind that asp automatically serializes objects to JSON. There is no need or good reason to manually format JSON using concatenation. As a matter of fact, manually formatting JSON leads to errors and extensibility issues. Consider taking advantage of JSON serialization in .net.

Answer 4

User-94355476 posted

I had to use concatenation to introduce the value of filename into the JSON string.

string data = "{ \"FileData\" : { \"fileNameWithPath\" : \"" + filename + "\"}}";