EP 32 : Using Refit to Consume APIs in .NET Core

Read Time : 4 Mins

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In today’s newsletter we are going to discuss:

• What is Refit client library

• How is it different than conventional HTTP client approach

• How to use it in .NET 6.0

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What is Refit client library

Refit client is a type safe library to make HTTP calls. It lets you define your API calls using C# interfaces.

For me it is fantastic instead of writing a lot of HTTP Client configuration code.

It is available in .NET, NET Core and Xamarin

How is it different than conventional approach

In conventional style we have to first configure HTTP client, setting base address, headers, serialization/deserialization. We write a lot of code for all this.

Refit allows us to do all this with a few lines of code making this experience more clean and less code.

How to use it in .NET 6.0

I have created a WEB API and its controller looks like this:

Let’s add a class library now which will act like a client and then we will communicate with API using Refit.

1/ Installing Refit Nuget Packages

Open Nuget package manager in your project and install Refit package

2/ Define Interfaces for Communication

After installation of package define your interfaces

This Get and Post is coming from Refit, that is all we need to. Let’s see now how to send requests.

3/ Sending Requests to API

We have two ways to call these methods either with RestService approach as demonstrated in code snippet or we can inject interface as well.

For better testing experience it is recommended to use injection approach because we can mock it.

Let’s see how to register refit service in Program file.

4/ How to add headers

We can add headers in two ways :

• Over Interface [ Again and again for each interface]

• Using Delegate Handler [ Set them once for all ]

Headers Style:

Delegate Handler Style:

Before moving to delegating handler let’s define our header name and values.

Now we can use it in like this:

Add delegating handler in RefitClent service:

GitHub Demo Code

Get demo code of Refit Client at this GitHub Repository

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