Connecting to Data from Windows Phone 8

Chris WoodruffDirector, Perficient

Level: Intermediate to Advanced

Who I am?

Chris Woodruff

MVP, Visual C#

Director at Perficient

Co-host of Deep Fried Bytes Podcast

@cwoodruff / cwoodruff@live.com / Skype: cwoodruff

You will learn:

• Understand the benefits of using REST web services for your mobile apps

• Have an understanding to develop solutions against OData that will give better experiences for your users

• How to shape your data queries to give the best performance for your mobile apps

• A glimpse into using Windows Azure Mobile Services to also get to your data in the cloud.

LETS TAKE A REST

• REST is an architectural style for distributed hypermedia systems

• REpresentational State Transfer• The term originated in 2000 by Roy Fielding for his

PhD thesis• REST states that the existing protocols and principles

of the web are enough to create robust Web Services – no SOAP is needed

What is REST?

What does REST consist of?

REST is a very simple architecture:• Application state and functionality is divided into

resources.• Every resource is uniquely addressable using a universal

syntax for hypermedia links• All resources share a uniform interface for the transfer of

state between a client and a resource

What does REST consist of?

Characteristics of REST• Client–server• Stateless• Cacheable• Uniform Interface• Named Resources• Interconnected Resource

Representations• Layered System

Operations of REST• GET• POST• PUT• DELETE

Example of REST

Query a Resource

http://www.parts-depot.com/parts/getPart?id=00345

http://www.parts-depot.com/parts/00345

http://restbucks.com/PlaceOrder?coffee={type}&size={size}&milk={milk}&location={location}

DIGGING INTO ODATA

Open Data Protocol (OData)

• “RESTful” Web protocol• Designed to work with data across HTTP• Built on existing Web standards• Uses popular formats to return data payloads to

consumer• Uses self-describing metadata• Has multiple options to build implementation based on

standard protocol• Soon to be a full web standard

The Basics

• Feeds, which are Collections of typed Entries• OData services can expose Service

Operations• OData services expose all these constructs via

URIs • OData service may also expose a Service

Metadata Document

Full SQL like Query “Language”

HTTP Command (Verb)

SQL Command

GET SELECT

PUT UPDATE

POST INSERT

DELETE DELETE

http://services.odata.org/OData/OData.svc\_______________________________________/ | service root URI

http://services.odata.org/OData/OData.svc/Category(1)/Products?$top=2&$orderby=name\_______________________________________/ \__________________/ \_________________/ | | | service root URI resource path query options

What is an OData URI loo like?

OData Best Practices (Producer)

• Always design your OData feed will server-side paging if your entity collections hold large amounts of data.

• Looks at server-side validation of queries and data updates based on the user credentials sent through HTTP

Why are we excited!!

ODATA AND HOW TO CONSUME IT IN WINDOWS PHONE

DEMOWindows Phone and OData

OData Best Practices (Consumer)

• Use Query Projection to only bring back the entity properties you or your app needs.

• Think about client-side paging even if their exists server-side paging.

• Design and implement a client-side data caching function in your app (unless sensitive data).

AZURE MOBILE SERVICES AND HOW TO CONSUME IT IN WINDOWS PHONE

DEMOWindows Phone and Azure Windows Services

The demo projects can be found at:

github.com/cwoodruff/

Resources

RESThttp://www.ics.uci.edu/~taylor/documents/2002-REST-TOIT.pdf

OData

http://odata.org

http://odataprimer.com

Azure Mobile Serviceshttp://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/mobile/

Contact Me

Chris “Woody” Woodruffcwoodruff@live.com

Twitter @cwoodruff

Skype cwoodruff

http://chriswoodruff.com

http://deepfriedbytes.com