Creating a Web Proxy for Mobile Clients (HTML5 Web App)

Question

I'm currently developing an HTML5 mobile web app for Blackberry using WebWorks that interacts with a 3rd party API.

Unfortunately i can't use the API directly from the mobile app due to the cross domain requests constraints, so i'm considering the development of a Web Proxy that interacts with the API and serves the web app.

Since I've never done such thing i would like to get some recommendations, i'm going to use Microsoft technologies (.NET) to achieve my purpose.

I'm thinking about a WCF service that makes all requests to the API and the mobile client connects to the WCF service to get the data, but i think i'll have the same cross domain requests limitation anyway so it might not work.

Answer 1

First, check with your third-party API provider if they support CORS. If they do, you can get around the same origin policy restrictions. Assuming they don't, you can create a facade service using ASP.NET Web API instead of WCF. ASP.NET Web API is designed from the ground up for creating HTTP services for broader reach and there is no SOAP involved.

From your ASP.NET Web API, you can make a HTTP call using HttpClient and simply pass the request to the third party API and echo the response back to your app. As you rightly said, the same origin policy restrictions will apply to this case as well but you have more control over the server side. You can implement CORS in ASP.NET Web API and that way your BB WW app can still call your web API despite being in different origins.