list contacts MS Graph

Question

HI,

I trying to learn Xamarin or better learn to code and of course I challenge me to connect an app to Office365 Accounts and fetch contacts, Mails or Tasks of a user.

I read and use all the docs, but now I have a problem where I see my limitations. I try to fetch contacts from the user account.

On the one side I have my data model which contains the properties for the contact.

On the other side I get the contacts from Graph with:

 var mscontacts = await App.GraphClient.Me
                 .Contacts
                 .Request()
                 .GetAsync();

If I try to fill my ObservableCollection based on my model, with the data from MS Graph then I get an error. So, I understand from Graph I get a Json stream(?) which is not compatible to my model. Is that correct so far?

What I must do now? Do I need a converter? I my approach completely wrong? Are there any books, wich describe that?

I'm thankful for your help.

Juergen

Answer 1

Hello,

If I try to fill my ObservableCollection based on my model, with the data from MS Graph then I get an error. So, I understand from Graph I get a Json stream(?) which is not compatible to my model. Is that correct so far?

If the response is in JSON format, you need to parse this JSON String, try to use NewtonSoft JSON.NET library.
Right-click your project, select Manage Nuget Packages, search NewtonSoft under Browse, install this package, then you could deserialize the JSON, refer to

 var mscontacts = "{\"value\":[{\"parentFolderId\":\"parentFolderId-value\",\"birthday\":\"datetime-value\",\"fileAs\":\"fileAs-value\",\"displayName\":\"displayName-value\",\"givenName\":\"givenName-value\",\"initials\":\"initials-value\"}]}";  

            var mscontactsModel = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Mscontacts>(mscontacts);// I define a faker data to test  
            foreach (var mscontact in mscontactsModel.value)  
            {  
                Console.WriteLine("{0}", mscontact.initials);  
            }  

The Model :

  public class Mscontacts  
        {  
            public ObservableCollection<MscontactModel> value { get; set; }   
        }  
    public class MscontactModel  
    {  
        public string parentFolderId { get; set; }  
        public string birthday { get; set; }  
        public string fileAs { get; set; }  
        public string displayName { get; set; }  
        public string givenName { get; set; }  
        public string initials { get; set; }  
    }  

You could refer to the Retrieve data part of this doc about How to Consume a RESTful web service: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/xamarin/xamarin-forms/data-cloud/web-services/rest#retrieve-data

Best Regards,
Wenyan Zhang

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