Sql Server REST API

This library enables you to easily create REST services in ASP.NET based on the existing tables or SQL queries in SQL Server.

Setup

Get REST API library from NuGet. there are two packages that you can use - one that uses Belgrade Data access, and another that uses Dapper ORM.

If you want to use Dapper ORM for data access, you should install following package:

PM> Install-Package Belgrade.TSql.RestApi

If you want to use Dapper ORM for data access, you should install following package:

PM> Install-Package Dapper.TSql.RestApi

You will need to configure data access components in Startup class (Configure service method):

using TSQL.RestApi;

namespace MyApp {

    public class Startup
    {

        // This method gets called by the runtime. Use this method to add services to the container.
        public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
        {
            services.AddBelgradeSqlClient(Configuration["ConnectionStrings:MyConnection"]);
        }

    }
}

Assumption in this example is that your connection string is stored in appsettings.config file under key MyConnection.

{
  "Logging": {
    "IncludeScopes": false,  
    "LogLevel": {
      "Default": "Debug",
      "System": "Information",
      "Microsoft": "Information"
    }
  },
  "ConnectionStrings": {
    "MyConnection": "Server=.;Database=MyDatabase;Integrated Security=true"
  }
}

Create ASP.NET Controller that will serve Http requests

You need to create standard ASP.NET Controller that will handle Http requests from the clients (e.g. browsers). As a first step you need to setup IQueryPipe interface that will be used to execute queries against the database. Usually you will use standard dependency injection to initialize member of controller that will be used as data access component:

using TSql.RestApi;

namespace Catalog.Controllers
{
    [Route("api/[controller]")]
    public class PeopleController : Controller
    {
        TSqlCommand sqlQuery = null;

        public PeopleController(TSqlCommand sqlQueryService)
        {
            this.sqlQuery = sqlQueryService;
        }

Implement REST API method

Now you need to create async method that will serve requests. The only thing that you need to do is to call Stream method of TSqlCommand, provide T-SQL query that should be executed in database, the output stream (HttpResponse.Body) where results of the query should be sent, and the text that should be returned to the client if SQL query don't return any result.

        // GET api/People/Load
        [HttpGet("Load")]
        public async Task Load()
        {
            await sqlQuery.Stream("select * from people for json path", Response.Body, "[]");
        }

Note that FOR JSON clause is used in SQL query. FOR JSON clause will generate JSON output from SQL Server instead of tabular result set. This method will just stream JSON result returned by query into Response.Body.

Implement OData service

To implement OData Service, you would need to add the TableSpec object that describes the structure of the table that will be queried (name and columns). An example is shown in the following code:

        TSqlCommand sqlQuery = null;
        
        TableSpec tableSpec = new TableSpec(schema: "dbo", table: "People", columns: "name,surname,address,town");
        
        public PeopleController(TSqlCommand sqlQueryService)
        {
            this.sqlQuery = sqlQueryService;
        }

Now you need to create async method that will serve OData requests that process OData reques using table specification and process it by issueing a T-SQL query via sqlQuery object:

public async Task OData()
{
    await this
            .OData(tableSpec)
            .Process(this.sqlQuery);
}

That's everything that you need to do. With three lines of code you can create OData service on any table. You can find more more details in OData documentation page.

You can see how to create OData services in the SQL Server Wide World Importers sample app.

Implement REST service that process JQuery DataTables Ajax request

JQuery DataTables is JQuery component that enhances HTML tables and adds rich client-side functionalities such as filtering, pagination, ordering by columns, etc. JQuery DataTables component might work in two modes:

• Client-side mode where rows are loaded into the table in browser, and then all sorting, filering and pagination operations are done via JavaScript.
• Server-side mode where AJAX request with information about the curent page, sort/filter condition, is sent to the server, and REST API should return results that should be shown in the table.

In order to configure JQuery DataTables in server-side processing mode, you need to put an empty HTML table in your HTML page, and specify that DataTables plugin should be applied on this page with the following options:

$(document).ready(function() {

   $('#example').DataTable( {
       "serverSide": true,
       "ajax": "/api/People",
       "columns": [
           { "data": "name", "width": "10%" },
           { "data": "surname", "width": "10%" },
           { "data": "address", "width": "50%" },
           { "data": "town", "width": "10%" }
       ]
   } );

} );

Option "serverSide" will tell DataTables plugin to send AJAX request to the service that will return results that should be shown. Url of the service is defined in "ajax" option. The last option is list of the columns that should be shown. This library supports object data source, so columns property is requied.

In order to implement REST service that handles AJAX requests that JQuery DataTables sends in server-side mode, you would need to add the TableSpec object that describes the structure of the table that will be queried (name and columns). An example is shown in the following code:

        TSqlCommand sqlQuery = null;
        
        TableSpec tableSpec = new TableSpec(schema: "dbo", table: "People", columns: "name,surname,address,town");
        
        public PeopleController(TSqlCommand sqlQueryService)
        {
            this.sqlQuery = sqlQueryService;
        }

Now you need to create async method that will serve JQuery DataTables AJAX requests. First, you need to parse Request parameters using Table function based on table specification in order to extract the definition of query. Then you need to process this info using the TSqlCommand that will stream results to JQuery DataTables using Response.Body:

        private static readonly TableSpec purchaseorders = new TableSpec("WebApi","PurchaseOrders", "OrderDate,SupplierReference,ExpectedDeliveryDate,ContactName,ContactPhone,IsOrderFinalized,PurchaseOrderID");
        public async Task PurchaseOrders()
        {
            await this.Table(purchaseorders).Process(this.sqlQuery);
        }

JQuery DataTables component requires AJAX response in some pre-defined format, so you would need to wrap results from database with header that contains number of total and number of filtered records. Note that JQuery DataTables plugin uses recordsTotal and recordsFiltered to build pagination. Since you would need two additional queries . Reccomendation is to use alternative paging plugins that don't require these options.

You can see how to create services that are used by JQuery DataTables in the SQL Server Wide World Importers sample app.