I am consuming an API that returns json data as string. That is its return type is Task<string>. Generally API returns an object of Response class which is then serialized by dot NET. But in this case the API returns serialized version of Response class.
I am trying to consume this API using RestSharp->RestClient. In the RestClient method ExecutePostAsync<T>(request), the response is deserialized by the method into the object of class specified in place of T. I have class named Response class in which I want the response to be deserialized. So, I make the request as,
_restClient.ExecutePostAsync<Response>(request)
Now the problem I am facing is the json string returned in response by API is in form "{<json-fields>}", but when received to RestClient it is in form \"{<json-fields>}\". That is escape characters are added to it. So, NewtonSoftJSON which is used by RestClient to serialize and deserialize gives error, Error converting \"{<json-fields>}\" to Response class.
Also I need original RestResponse from RestClient as I am performing Validation on RestResponse. So, cannot do like, get response as string and deserialize it. That is I dont't want to do like,
var restResponse = _restClient.ExecutePostAsync<string>(request);
var data = Deserialize(restResponse.Data);
As this will only give me object of Response class but I need object of RestResponse<Response> class to perform validations.
What can I do in this situation?
Through some research on internet, I found following solution,
We will initialize the RestClient and RestRequest as,
RestClient restClient = new RestClient();
RestRequest request = new RestRequest(<url>);
Now as the response from api is json data in from of simple string, we can instruct request to accept text response as follows,
restRequest.AddHeader("Accept", "text/plain");
Now, RestClient by default doesn't use NewtonSoftJson deserialization for response type text/plain. So, we need to add a handler to tell RestClient to use NewtonSoftJson deserialization as follows,
restClient.AddHandler("text/plain", () => new RestSharp.Serializers.NewtonsoftJson.JsonNetSerializer());
Now we can make request as follows and it will work fine,
restRequest.AddJsonBody(<body>);
restClient.ExceutePostAsync<T>(restRequest);
where we can replace T with class in which we want our response to be deserialized.
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