ReadResponseAsString behavior

[John-Papachristos]

Hi there,

I wanted to ask about the intended behavior of the ReadResponseAsString option. I was hoping it would return the API response as a string to the caller, but it looks like the generated code shown below is still returning an object:

                    if (status_ == 200)
                    {
                        var objectResponse_ = await ReadObjectResponseAsync<Message>(response_, headers_, cancellationToken).ConfigureAwait(false);
                        if (objectResponse_.Object == null)
                        {
                            throw new ApiException("Response was null which was not expected.", status_, objectResponse_.Text, headers_, null);
                        }
                        return objectResponse_.Object;

If I change the generated code to return the Text property instead, then it gives me the result I was hoping for:

               return objectResponse_.Text;

However, I don't want to change the generated code. I was wondering if the generated code is working as intended, if it should actually be returning the Text property when the ReadResponseAsString flag is set to true.

Thanks,
John P.

[SebastianStehle]

The goal of this property is not to return a string, but to read it as string.

The HTTP response body is made available as a string. Therefore you can read directly from that and avoid the allocation of the string. But this has the disadvantage that deserialization errors are harder to debug. Therefore there is a property to configure that. For example you can set the property to true in you test or staging environment and set it to false in production to have better performance.

[John-Papachristos]

Yes, I noticed that it was included when an exception is thrown. Unfortunately not so in the OK response case:

return new SwaggerResponse(status_, headers_, objectResponse_.Object);

Ideally, what I would like to see is the objectResponse_.Text included as part of this SwaggerResponse when ReadResponseAsString is turned on. Something like this:

return new SwaggerResponse(status_, headers_, objectResponse_.Object, objectResponse_.Text);

Would this be a worthwhile inclusion to the product, to cater for the situation that I explained earlier?

Thanks,
John P.

[SebastianStehle]

I am not the Autor but I would not add that because it is easy enough to edit the templates. All these special cases need to be maintained

[John-Papachristos]

Thanks. That's great! I wasn't aware that the generation templates were available to customize. It looks like this could be an answer for us. I'll give it a try.

[SebastianStehle]

I create everything from a custom console program and have a few template customizations:
https://github.com/Squidex/squidex-samples/blob/master/csharp/Squidex.ClientLibrary/CodeGeneration/Program.cs#L40

[John-Papachristos]

I tried this and it works well. Opens up a whole new world of possibilities. Thank you very much for your help with this.