Creating an MVC Controller Proxy for a Web API Controller

Question

I have an MVC project that is exposed externally. I have an internal Web API project.

For reasons beyond my control, I cannot expose the Web API project directly and I cannot add Web API Controllers to my MVC project.

I need to create an MVC Controller that will act as a proxy for a Web API Controller. I need the response from the MVC Controller to look as if the Web API was called directly.

What is the best way to accomplish this?

Is there a better approach than what I have so far?

How can I fix the error that I am getting?

Here is what I have so far:

MyMVCController

[HttpGet]
public HttpResponseMessage GetData(HttpRequestMessage request)
    {
        ...

        var response = proxy.GetData();

        return request.CreateResponse();
    }

MyProxyClass

public HttpResponseMessage GetData()
    {
        ...
        return HttpRequest(new HttpRequestMessage(HttpMethod.Get, uri));
    }

private HttpResponseMessage HttpRequest(HttpRequestMessage message)
    {
        HttpResponseMessage response;

        ...

        using (var client = new HttpClient())
        {
            client.Timeout = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(120);
            response = client.SendAsync(message).Result;
        }

        return response;
    }

In the MVC Controller, I am getting an InvalidOperationException on the request.CreateResponse() line. The error says:

The request does not have an associated configuration object or the provided configuration was null.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I have searched Google and StackOverflow but I haven't been able to find a good solution for creating this proxy between MVC and Web API.

Thanks!

Answer 1

You can do it by just creating some JsonResult action in your controller which will return result of calling web API.

public class HomeController : Controller
{
    public async Task<JsonResult> CallToWebApi()
    {
        return this.Content(
            await new WebApiCaller().GetObjectsAsync(),
            "application/json"
        );
    }
}

public class WebApiCaller
{
    readonly string uri = "your url";

    public async Task<string> GetObjectsAsync()
    {
        using (HttpClient httpClient = new HttpClient())
        {
            return await httpClient.GetStringAsync(uri);
        }
    }
}