Login to XDrive using the .NET Framework

Last week I looked at what it would take to upload a file to XDrive, but in my list of API's involved in uploading a file I actually forgot the most important one: Login. Logging on to XDrive creates a session and the Login API provides you with a crucial bit of information: the jsessionid. You need to pass a reference to the session everytime you make an API call, so that makes it essential to make any application run.

So let's create some C# code to login to XDrive.

Below is a method uses the .NET Framework classes WebRequest and WebResponse to send an HTTP POST message to the XDrive server and retrieve the results.

private string Login()
{
    // url for xdrive login
    string url = "https://plus.xdrive.com/json/v1.2/member.login";

    // the json object that we need to send to the login resource
    string json = "data={\"user\":{\"type\":\"MemberObject\",\"username\":\"mark\",\"password\":\"secret\"}}";
    // convert JSON to bytes
    byte[] bytes = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(json);

    // create a request using System.Net.WebRequest
    WebRequest request = WebRequest.Create(url);

    // use form-url encoding
    request.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";

    // the API will only take POST requests
    request.Method = "POST";

    // length of the request we're sending
    request.ContentLength = bytes.Length;
   
    Stream os = null;
    try
    {
        // get a stream to write to and write the bytes to the stream
        os = request.GetRequestStream();
        os.Write(bytes, 0, bytes.Length);
    }
    catch (WebException exception)
    {
        MessageBox.Show(exception.ToString());
        return null;
    }
    finally
    {
        // close the stream in the finally
        if (os != null)
        {
            os.Close();
        }
    }

    string result = null;

    try
    { 
        // use the request object to get to the response
        WebResponse response = request.GetResponse();

        if (response != null)
        {
            StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream());
            result = sr.ReadToEnd();
            MessageBox.Show(result);
        }
    }
    catch (WebException exception)
    {
        MessageBox.Show(exception.ToString());
        return null;
    }
    return ExtractSessionID(result);
}

On the last line you see a method called 'ExtractSessionID'. The code for this method is below. .NET 3.5 offers functionality for parsing JSON objects into .NET objects, but because I wanted this method to also work on .NET 2.0 I decided to implement a string parse routine which extracts the jsessionid from the response.

private string ExtractSessionID(string jsonUserdata)
{

    //{"results":{"user":{"lastname":"Blomsma","rootFolderId":"xdr:XFS-1665063167",
    //"type":"MemberObject","firstname":"Mark","username":"markdeveloper@aim.com","email":
    //"markdeveloper@aim.com","userSeq":3007402}},"recoveryToken":"3007402|bWFya2RldmVsb
    //3BlckBhaW0uY29tfGZKUS92ZTMyb08wWE18MTE5MzI0Mjc5MTI1NXxNQ3dDRkJm
    //MnUvSXN4bG9hZEtIbEtmQW41Tjg3YzRodEFoUmFtTjFPUmdReU04SmRPd1hQUHZlaWpPOUVodz09",
    //"jsessionid":"EB396F97E81FC1005098AAC01E170218.xdr-mtc19.websys.aol.com_6002"}

    if (jsonUserdata != null && jsonUserdata != String.Empty)
    {
        string result = jsonUserdata.Substring(0, jsonUserdata.LastIndexOf("\"")); // get string until last "
        result = result.Substring(result.LastIndexOf("\"") + 1); // get string from last "
        return result;
    }
    // return empty 
    return String.Empty;
}

There are still a couple of MessageBox.Show statements in this sample. Try and run it from a Windows application and this will give you an idea of what kind of data goes across the wire.

Happy coding!

- Mark Blomsma