Unity Web Request and Json Utility

[deadlyfingers]

Unity is adding support for REST and JSON and it would be better to adopt the built-in methods therefore removing the need for external dependencies or plugins.

• http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/UnityWebRequest.html
• http://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/JsonUtility.FromJson.html

[deadlyfingers]

UnityWebRequest is marked experimental status - waiting for release before implementing this.

[deadlyfingers]

UnityWebRequest is now out of experimental status in current version of Unity (5.4), but reports that there are problems using the HTTP PATCH method on Android.

• First going to using try custom override header: "X-HTTP-Method-Override": "PATCH", otherwise things might get tricky... UPDATE you have to do some tweaking first to get this to work. I got it to work using method-override for App Services running on node backend. I've posted details of this on the related links below.

Related Articles: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19797842/patch-request-android-volley http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/1230067/trying-to-use-patch-on-a-unitywebrequest-on-androi.html

@dgkanatsios (who wrote the AzureServicesForUnity library) suggested a workaround for PATCH on Android by using an Easy API update method as a proxy.

[deadlyfingers]

Switching over to UnityWebRequest & JsonUtility will bring in a number of changes to the library...

But I ran into a couple of issues / gotyas with Unity's JsonUtility -

1. JsonUtility can't parse a top level json array atm. The easiest workaround is to add property with the array as value see http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/how-to-load-an-array-with-jsonutility.375735/
2. Be careful parsing properties which include the shorthand {get; set;}. I had to remove these shorthand getters & setters from my data model for parsing to work correctly, otherwise I got back empty objects without any parse error info. Use fields for serialization, not properties.

One the plus side it supports the class attribute [Serializable] and property attributes [SerializeField], [NonSerialized]

• https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/JSONSerialization.html

Another thing I would like with UnityWebRequest is to not have to wrap requests with StartCoroutine(), but atm this still seems like the cleanest way of starting an async request - I'm open to other suggestions...

[deadlyfingers]

Status update: This branch is working on Mac/Windows Unity Editor, iOS and Android. But I appear to be hitting JsonUtililty deserialization issues when running as a W10 universal app. Holding this release as a feature branch until this issue is resolved. I've tried to keep external interfaces as similar as possible, so it should not be too much hassle to update. The main changes will involve:

• wrapping async callbacks with StartCoroutine()
• changed from <List<T>> to T[]

[deadlyfingers]

To parse a Json array of objects with JsonUtility you have to do a work-around using a wrapper object with a T[] array field. This array wrapper method described on the Unity forum works on iOS and Android and in the Unity Editor Mac/PC, but when running my W10 Universal app I hit an error: Handle is not initialized. This Unity JsonUtility parse error happens when you try to parse a Json array of objects in a Windows Store App...

So far I've found a couple of work-around solutions using platform directives for running on UWP:

1. Opt for using Newtonsoft.Json; WSA plugin within UNITY_WSA directive. https://github.com/SaladLab/Json.Net.Unity3D/blob/master/docs/UwpWorkaround.md https://github.com/SaladLab/Json.Net.Unity3D/releases/download/8.0.3/JsonNet-UwpWorkaround.8.0.3.zip http://json.codeplex.com/workitem/25220 http://www.newtonsoft.com/json/help/html/deserializeobject.htm

   #if UNITY_WSA
   using Newtonsoft.Json;
   #endif

   #if UNITY_WSA
   T[] array = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<T[]>(json);
   return array;
   #endif

2. Opt for using Windows.Data.Json; WinRT API within NETFX_CORE directive. https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/windowsstore-scripts.html https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/windows.data.json.jsonobject.tryparse http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10951466/jsonarray-parse-error

   #if NETFX_CORE
   using Windows.Data.Json;
   using System.Collections.Generic;
   using System.Linq;
   #endif

   #if NETFX_CORE
   JsonArray array = new JsonArray();
   if (JsonArray.TryParse(json, out array)) {
   List<T> list = new List<T>();
   foreach(var x in array) {
     T item = JsonUtility.FromJson<T>(x.ToString());
     list.Add(item);
   }
   return list.ToArray();
   }
   return default(T[]);
   #endif