View Full Version : My Introduction and my new C# API :)
Hi Guys,
thought i would say hello.
I've been working on a C# library for accessing the SOAP webservice.
I've pretty much got everything working now, and i was wondering if there was any interest for me to release it into the public domain?
The API that ive developed is much more suited to ASP.NET development, and does some nice things like caching information to reduce the number of calls to the AW webservice and also speed up application response time.
I hope to have a working site live on the net soon to showcase the API, but if anyone else was interested i'll start cleaning up the code to make it a little more presentable :)
Cheers
Joe
Hi Joe
As a PHPer, I won't personally have any use for this. But as a long standing member of the shopwindow community, I can say, hand on heart THIS WILL DEFINITELY BE USEFUL TO SOMEBODY!
I seem to remember alot of ASPers having trouble getting their apis to work properly, so if you've solved all those problems already, it should be very well received.
I got a PM from George Fletcher so i just sent him a link to a demo site.
Its still very much "proof of concept", but i seem to have overcome most of the hurdles now.. should have a fully working site soon..
have a play if you like - my dev server is here:
http://213.171.206.24/default.aspx?cat=97
Not much activity on this board is there!?
Anyway, ive now created a .NET web service. Not going to post the link here as dont want anyone sucking loads of data out of it and killing my server, but if you're interested and want to try connecting to it, let me know and i'll send you a link to the WSDL.
Should work with any SOAP 1.1 / 1.2 compliment system, so even you PHP boys should be able to use it :)
Example code for populating a ListView Control:
AWIN.AWINNETWebservice s = new AWIN.AWINNETWebservice();
AWIN.ProductSearchResults results = s.GetProducts(99,10,1,"");
ListView1.DataSource = results.Products;
ListView1.DataBind();
Dont think i could have made it more simple than that!!
(The reason i do C# and not PHP :p )
Anyone interested in this or will i be the only person using it??
Not much activity on this board is there!?
There's more lurkers than posters at the moment, simply because version 3 of the client is allegedly on it's way at some point in the near future and due to changes in usage and quotas and the likes, the quota thing especially has cut down the amount of people that were visiting and posting here.
Information like this is definately of use though and great to be shared.
I'd definately be interested in seeing how this all goes.
First thing I noticed, was how especially quick the pages all load, much much quicker than most of the sites i've seen using ShopWindows stuff.
First thing I noticed, was how especially quick the pages all load, much much quicker than most of the sites i've seen using ShopWindows stuff.
yeah, i've tuned it for performance by setting it to cache requests.
First time a request it made, it hits the AWIN servers for the data, then stores the response in an in-memory cache.
Subsequent requests can then return the cached version of the data rather than hitting the AWIn servers for every request, as its the calls to the AWIN server that takes the time.
Basically, the longer the application is running, the more data will be cached and the more responsive it will become.
Also its running on some nice hardware. My dev server is a FastHosts DS650 dedicated server which is great for this type of work :)
Going forward im going to be implementing persistent caching so that data is cached to a SQL database. This will allow cached data to be preserved between server reboots etc, and also open the possibility of using clustered servers. I could even feed in product feeds to the database and eliminate the need to call the AWIn webservice altogeher.. not decided about that yet though.
The webservice version is really cool. It's really easy to use, and takes very little code to get it working allowing you to concentrate on making the site look good to sell stuff.
Depending on if version 3 breaks all my code, im considering setting this up as a hosted service for other affiliates to use on a subscription basis.
I was thinking Free usage for the first few hundred requests per month, then paid subscription for heavy users (heavy users should hopefully be making affiliate cash, so can afford to pay a subscription)
For just a few pounds per month to cover my hosting bills people would benefit from a lighting fast content delivery system built specifically for ASP.NET :)
Any interest??
Looks like V3 of the shopwindow API has totally broke my V2 C# implementation...
No matter, i like a challenge, Expect a V3 version very soon - then we will see if V3 is as good as they make out ;)
EDIT:
At least this version of the wsdl opens up in Visual Studio - thats progress i suppose, also means that i dont have to do my crazy workarounds to get it compliant with VS.