You can now access the Office 365 APIs using libraries available for .NET and JavaScript. These libraries make it easier to interact with the REST APIs from the device or platform of your choice.
The libraries are included in the latest update for Office 365 API Tools for Visual Studio Preview. Along with the libraries, this release also brings you some key updates to the tooling experience, making it easier to interact with Office 365 services.
Client libraries
Office 365 provides REST-based APIs that enable developers to access Office resources such as calendar, contacts, mail, files, and more.
The client libraries will let you:
- Perform authentication and discovery
- Use the Mail, Calendar and Contacts API
- Use the My Files and Sites API (currently .NET only, with JavaScript coming soon)
- Use the Users and Groups API
You can program directly against the REST APIs to interact with Office 365, but it requires you to write and maintain code around managing authentication tokens, constructing the right urls and queries for the API you wanted to access, and perform other tasks.
By using client libraries to access the Office 365 APIs, you can reduce the complexity of the code you need to write to access the APIs. We’re providing these libraries for .NET as well as JavaScript developers for use with the just-announced multi-device hybrid applications.
Here are some examples of how easy it is access the Office 365 APIs using these libraries.
.NET C# code to authenticate and get upcoming events from your Office 365 calendar:
// Shows UI to authenticate
Authenticator = newAuthenticator();
AuthenticationInfo result = await authenticator.AuthenticateAsync("https://outlook.office365.com");
The AuthenticateAsync method will prompt for a username and password and authenticate against the specified resource url, like outlook.office365.com in this case. Once you have the authentication information, you can create a client object that serves as the base for accessing all the APIs for Exchange:
// Create a client object
ExchangeClient client =
newExchangeClient(newUri("https://outlook.office365.com/ews/odata"),
result.GetAccessToken);
Because we’re using .NET here, we get to take advantage of the native language capabilities, like LINQ, so querying the Office 365 calendar is as simple as writing a LINQ query and executing it:
// Obtain calendar event data
var eventsResults = await (from i in client.Me.Events
where i.End >= DateTimeOffset.UtcNow
select i).Take(10).ExecuteAsync();
With just those four lines of code you can start making calls to the Office 365 APIs!
We wanted to make sure that you can reach multiple device and service platforms with a consistent API, so the client libraries are portable .NET libraries, which means they also work with Android and iOS devices through Xamarin. Because authentication needs to display a UI that is different on the various platforms, we also provide platform-specific authentication libraries, which can then be used with the portable ones to provide an end-to-end experience.
For developers creating multi-device hybrid applications that target multiple device platforms through JavaScript, we also have JavaScript versions of these libraries that provide a similar experience while adopting JavaScript’s patterns and practices, such as using the promises pattern instead of await.
Here is the same example to authenticate and get calendar events in JavaScript:
var authContext = new O365Auth.Context();
authContext.getIdToken('https://outlook.office365.com/')
.then((function (token) {
// authentication succeeded
var client = new Exchange.Client('https://outlook.office365.com/ews/odata',
token.getAccessTokenFn('https://outlook.office365.com'));
client.me.calendar.events.getEvents().fetch()
.then(function (events) {
// get currentPage of calendar events
var myevents = events.currentPage;
}, function (reason) {
// handle error
});
}).bind(this), function (reason) {
// authentication failed
});
The flow to authenticate and create a client object is similar across .NET and JavaScript, but you’re doing it in a way that should be natural to the language.
Along with the JavaScript files for these libraries, we are also including the TypeScript type definition (.d.ts)—in case you choose to develop your apps in TypeScript.
As you get started using these libraries, there are a few things to keep in mind. This is a very early preview release of the libraries that is meant to prove out the concept and get feedback on it. The libraries do not currently cover all the APIs provided by the services and some of the APIs in the library may not work. The APIs in the libraries themselves will definitely change in future updates.
Note that while we tend to call these “client” libraries, these also work with .NET server technologies like Asp.Net Web Forms and MVC, so you really get to target the breadth of the .NET platform.
Tooling updates
With today’s update of our Office 365 API Tools for Visual Studio 2013, the tool displays the available Office 365 services that you can add to your project. Once you’ve signed in with your Office 365 credentials, adding a service to your project is as easy as selecting the appropriate service and applying the required permissions.
Once you submit the changes, Visual Studio performs the following:
- Registers an application (if there isn’t an application registered yet) in Microsoft Azure Active Directory to consume Office 365 services.
- Adds the following to the project:
- Client libraries from Nuget for the configured services.
- Sample code files that use the Client Libraries.
Project types supported
With the broad reach of the client libraries, the Office 365 API tool is now available for a variety of project types (client, desktop, and web) in Visual Studio. Here’s are all the project types supported with the May update:
- .NET Windows Store Apps
- Windows Forms Application
- WPF Application
- ASP.NET MVC Web Application
- ASP.NET Web Forms Application
- Xamarin Android and iOS Applications
- Multi-device hybrid apps
Installing the latest update
To install the latest update, you can either:
- Check for updates within Visual Studio. To do so, follow these steps:
- In Visual Studio menu, click Tools->Extensions and Updates->Updates.
- You should see the update available for Office 365 API Tools.
- Click Update to update to the latest version.
–OR–
- Download the extension and install it manually.
Once you’ve updated, you can invoke the Office 365 API tool as usual, that is, by going to your project node in the Solution Explorer and selecting Add->Connected Service from the context menu.
Looking forward to seeing your Apps out there when I visit the stores!!
MSDN references
Check also new SharePoint Online Solution Pack for branding and provisioning. This package contains also some examples, which originates from the AMS reference implementations. Here’s the direct links for the Solution Pack
You can find introduction to this SharePoint Online Solution Pack for branding and provisioning from following blog post – Introduction to SharePoint Online Solution Pack for branding and provisioning released.
SharePoint Samurai 