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A How-To: Generating the Service Client Proxy code

The Sample Problem

You've recently joined a large project, with a distributed team, collaborating on building a Client Application - which could be a Mobile, Desktop, or Web App - and the application being built needs to integrate with a 3rd-Party Service that you don't have much visibility into, or little ability to change.

The 3rd-Party Service does have well defined contracts, deployed to integration-test endpoints, and the Specs are shared with you via an OpenAPI Spec.

You are asked to find a repeatable approach to generate interfaces and DTOs from the spec, based on the above constraints.

Also, since you've come to this repo, we'll assume you want to use NSwag as part of your solution.

Prerequisites

  • NSwag - This process we'll cover requires the NSwag commandline tool to help automate generation of a service client, an interface definition and DTOs. Follow install instructions to install the command line version of nswag.
  • OpenAPI Swagger Editor VS Code Extension (optional) - This Visual Studio Code (VS Code) extension adds rich support for the OpenAPI Specification (OAS) (formerly known as Swagger Specification) in JSON or YAML format. The features include, for example, SwaggerUI and ReDoc preview, IntelliSense, linting, schema enforcement, code navigation, definition links, snippets, static security analysis, and more!
  • If in later steps you choose to download the 3rd-Party Service's Open API Spec, this plugin makes it easy visualize

Notes:

  • You may need to specify runtime version nswag version /runtime:Net50 to run nswag on your local machine, since the sample nswag config we'll use specifies runtime as Net50.
  • If you chose to download NSwag as a ZIP Archive, you may see dotnet version errors when trying to execute commands. If you are not able to resolve the issues, you may opt to install via Chocolatey or the MSI from the install instructions page provided above.
  • For this sample, we'll use the public Swagger Petstore as the sample 3rd-Party Service, later referred to as [YourRemoteService].

Creating Client Interface, DTOs and Proxy classes

OPTION 1: The sample process for (re)creating the service client, interface definition and DTOs, using an existing nswag configuration file, is as follows

  • Use an existing nswag config document, similar to sample.nswag from this sample folder.
  • In your App codebase, check for folders similar to MainApp > Services > [YourRemoteService], and MainApp > Contracts > [YourRemoteService], if they are missing, create them
  • If [YourRemoteService] has a public unauthenticated Open API Spec endpoint, one that gets appropriately versioned before changes are published, you can use it directly.
  • Otherwise, I recommend downloading the desired version (typically current version) of your Service Swagger from the Cloud and place the file in the same directory as the sample.nswag.
    • If you downloaded a copy of the OpenAPI-Spec, you may want to include it along side with the nswag generated files, for reference and ad-hoc version tracking.
  • Generate the service client, interface definitions and DTOs by running the nswag CLI:
nswag run sample.nswag /runtime:Net50
  • Take the output from the above command, an update files, if needed, in your MainApp > Services > [YourRemoteService], and MainApp > Contracts > [YourRemoteService] folders
  • Check if any updates are needed to service instances (or mock instances) that you may have registered with a Dependency Injection container used in your App, if any.

OPTION 2: To customize the outputs, follow these additional steps

  • Create your own sample.nswag configuration based on the starter sample below.
  • Check for folders similar to MainApp > Services > [YourRemoteService], and MainApp > Contracts > [YourRemoteService], if missing, create them
  • Update the location of the OpenAPI spec to the documentGenerator.fromDocument.url parameter in the nswag config file. The parameter can point to the local Yaml or Json file you downloaded, or an http address.
  • Update the class name codeGenerators.openApiToCSharpClient.className parameter in the nswag config file, to something other than SampleService
  • Update the namespace codeGenerators.openApiToCSharpClient.namespace parameter in the nswag config file, to something other than MainApp.Services.SampleService
  • Update the location of the generated C# code file codeGenerators.openApiToCSharpClient.output parameter in the nswag config file.
  • If you want the interface definition and DTOs as a separate file, ensure codeGenerators.openApiToCSharpClient.generateContractsOutput is set to true, and
    • Update the contractsNamespace codeGenerators.openApiToCSharpClient.contractsNamespace parameter in the nswag config file, to something other than MainApp.Services.SampleService.Contracts
    • Update the location of the generated C# contracts code file codeGenerators.openApiToCSharpClient.contractsOutputFilePath parameter in the nswag config file.
  • If you do not use a BaseClass beyond the generated interface, then set codeGenerators.openApiToCSharpClient.clientBaseClass to null, and codeGenerators.openApiToCSharpClient.useHttpRequestMessageCreationMethod to false
  • Generate the service client, interface definitions and DTOs by running the nswag CLI:
nswag run sample.nswag /runtime:Net50
  • Update files, if needed, in your MainApp > Services > [YourRemoteService], and MainApp > Contracts > [YourRemoteService] folders
  • Check if any updates are needed to service instances (or mock instances) registered with a Dependency Injection container in your App, if any.

Sample NSwag config

{
    "runtime": "Net50",
    "documentGenerator": {
        "fromDocument": {
            "json": "",
            "url": "YOUR_OPENAPI_SPEC_LOCATION_HERE",
            "output": null,
            "newLineBehavior": "Auto"
        }
    },    
    "codeGenerators": {
        "openApiToCSharpClient": {
            "generateClientClasses": true,
            "suppressClientClassesOutput": false,
            "generateClientInterfaces": true,
            "suppressClientInterfacesOutput": false,
            "generateDtoTypes": true,
            "injectHttpClient": true,
            "disposeHttpClient": true,
            "generateExceptionClasses": true,
            "exceptionClass": "ServiceException",
            "wrapDtoExceptions": false,
            "useHttpClientCreationMethod": false,
            "httpClientType": "System.Net.Http.HttpClient",
            "useHttpRequestMessageCreationMethod": true,
            "useBaseUrl": true,
            "generateBaseUrlProperty": true,
            "generateSyncMethods": false,
            "exposeJsonSerializerSettings": false,
            "clientClassAccessModifier": "public",
            "clientBaseClass": "MainApp.Services.BaseService",
            "typeAccessModifier": "public",
            "generateContractsOutput": true,
            "contractsNamespace": "MainApp.Services.SampleService.Contracts",
            "contractsOutputFilePath": "GENERATEDCONTRACTS.cs",
            "parameterDateTimeFormat": "s",
            "generateUpdateJsonSerializerSettingsMethod": true,
            "serializeTypeInformation": false,
            "queryNullValue": "",
            "className": "SampleService",
            "operationGenerationMode": "MultipleClientsFromOperationId",
            "generateOptionalParameters": false,
            "generateJsonMethods": true,
            "parameterArrayType": "System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable",
            "parameterDictionaryType": "System.Collections.Generic.IDictionary",
            "responseArrayType": "System.Collections.ObjectModel.ObservableCollection",
            "responseDictionaryType": "System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary",
            "wrapResponses": false,
            "generateResponseClasses": true,
            "responseClass": "SwaggerResponse",
            "namespace": "MainApp.Services.SampleService",
            "requiredPropertiesMustBeDefined": true,
            "dateType": "System.DateTime",
            "dateTimeType": "System.DateTime",
            "timeType": "System.TimeSpan",
            "timeSpanType": "System.TimeSpan",
            "arrayType": "System.Collections.ObjectModel.ObservableCollection",
            "arrayInstanceType": "System.Collections.ObjectModel.ObservableCollection",            
            "dictionaryType": "System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary",
            "arrayBaseType": "System.Collections.ObjectModel.ObservableCollection",
            "dictionaryBaseType": "System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary",
            "classStyle": "poco",
            "generateDefaultValues": true,
            "generateDataAnnotations": false,
            "excludedTypeNames": [],
            "handleReferences": false,
            "generateImmutableArrayProperties": false,
            "generateImmutableDictionaryProperties": false,
            "output": "GENERATEDCODE.cs"
        }
    }
}