Consuming Asp.Net Core api locally - asp.net

Question

I don't know if my google skills are diminishing or what but I can't seem to figure out how to consume a local api. This may be best explained with sample code...
So I have a simple api
public class FooApiController : Controller
{
public IActionResult GetFoo(int id)
{
if (id == 0)
return BadRequest();
var data = ... do db access
return Ok(data);
}
}
and a view controller
public class FooController : Controller
{
public IActionResult Foo()
{
var api = new FooApiController();
var data = api.GetFoo(1);
ViewBag.Data = data;
return View();
}
}
So in the above view controller I call the api to get the data needed. However, being that the api controller returns an IActionResult, ViewBad.Data ends up being an IActionResult object. So how do I change the above to check the StatusCode of the api call, handle errors if need be, and if not... put just the data into the ViewBag, instead of the entire result object.
Every sample I have found seems to have the view controller return a view that then uses an ajax call to get the data. While I understand and could easily do that, I don't like the idea of making 2 round trips to the server when I don't need to.

Answer 1

You are doing it wrong.
If you want to reuse the code among multiple controllers, then it is better to move it from the GetFoo method and put it into a shared class and access it from everywhere else.
If you want to call it from a view through REST, then call it using $.ajax
ex:
$.ajax('FooApi/GetFoo/5',function(data){alert(data);});
If you want to access it from another C# client, then use the HttpClient class, ex:
HttpClient client = new HttpClient();
client.BaseAddress = new Uri("http://localhost");
client.DefaultRequestHeaders.Accept.Clear();
client.DefaultRequestHeaders.Accept.Add(new MediaTypeWithQualityHeaderValue("application/json"));
HttpResponseMessage response = await client.PostAsJsonAsync("api/FooApi/GetFoo", 3);
response.EnsureSuccessStatusCode();