CODEWITHSUNDEEP
xamarinxamarin.androidfoursquarexamarin-studio
Harshil.Chokshi
Harshil.Chokshi

Reputation: 681

Advantages of using APIs wrapped with .NET in Xamarin

Around a year ago I made an iOS application that finds restaurants near your location of any type and displays information about them. I made a web service call using the FourSquare api to get all the data which was returned in json format and then I parsed it and displayed the information on the UI of the app. Now I want to make an android application using Xamarin.Android since I am learning working with Xamarin studios and C#. When I make a Xamarin.Android application and go to packages then add packages I see there is a Foursquare api package that has a .NET wrapper around it. Here is the website url:

https://www.nuget.org/packages/Foursquare.Api/

So my question is how does this work? Does adding this package mean I don't have to make a web serivce call anymore, instead all the data is stored inside this package and I just have to get all the data the same way I get information from a local database? What are the advantages of using this package instead of just making a web service call to Foursquare?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 160

Answers (1)

Jon Douglas
Jon Douglas

Reputation: 13176

Think of it this way:

This Foursquare API is simply a .NET wrapper of the web service that you want to use. Thus, somebody has gone ahead and done all of the hard work for you so you can simply consume the returned data in your applications.

What does this mean for you?

Well it means that you don't have to write any REST consumption code and you can focus more on the actual application and any business logic that you need to implement based on the Foursquare objects.

To not confuse any further, this data would come the same way as if you wrote your own web service to access the data from the Foursquare API endpoint.

Advantages:

  • Already written for you
  • You don't need to know your way around their REST API
  • Usually follows best practices per language so it's easy to consume (Objects created, methods, etc)

Disadvantages:

  • REST endpoint might be updated and not reflect in the package until it's updated
  • Any bugs/issues in the framework can be hard to workaround if the project is not open source
  • Could be a lack of documentation on how to use the wrapper

Upvotes: 3

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