Access Basecamp Through .NET API Wrapper

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Introduction

This wrapper simplifies calls to the Basecamp API by returning .NET objects.

How I Built It

1. First, I created a class for each response type returned by the Basecamp API.
   • AbbreviatedPost
   • AttachmentCategory
   • Comment
   • Category
   • Milestone
   • Person
   • Post
   • PostCategory
   • Project
   • TodoItem
   • TodoList

   Each of these classes then provided a static method that can parse an XML response into a generic list of that type.

   public static IList<Project> Parse(XmlNodeList projectNodes)

2. Next, I created the BasecampManager class that would do the work to format the request, parse the response, and return the desired object.

   public IList < Project > GetProjects() 
   {
       string cmd = "/project/list"; 
       IList<Project> projects = null;
       if (IsInitialized())
       {
           XmlDocument xml = SendRequest(cmd, "");
           projects = Project.Parse(xml.SelectNodes("//project"));
       }
       return projects;
   }

3. Next, I needed to handle requests that required an input request XML string.

   I accomplished this, by adding another static method to the specific domain classes that could generate an XML request string from an incoming set of parameters.

   public static string CreateCommentRequest(int postID, string body)
   {
       System.IO.StringWriter sw = new System.IO.StringWriter();
       XmlWriter w = new XmlTextWriter(sw);
       w.WriteStartElement("request");
       w.WriteStartElement("comment");
       w.WriteStartElement("post-id");
       w.WriteString(postID.ToString());
       w.WriteEndElement(); //end postID
       w.WriteStartElement("body");
       w.WriteString(body);
       w.WriteEndElement(); //end body
       w.WriteEndElement(); //end comment
       w.WriteEndElement(); //end request
       return sw.ToString();
   }
   

   I called this method then from my BasecampManager when I needed to create a Basecamp comment:

   public Comment CreateComment(int projectID, int postID, string body)
   {
       string cmd = "/msg/create_comment";
       string request = Comment.CreateCommentRequest(postID, body);
       XmlDocument xml = SendRequest(cmd, request);
       Comment comment = null;
       IList<Comment> comments = 
               Comment.Parse(xml.SelectNodes("//comment"));
       if (comments.Count > 0)
       {
           comment = comments[0];
       }
       return comment;
   }
   

4. I then repeated this process for each request/response that I wished to implement.

How To Use It

Step 1) Initialize connection information

Option 1: Use an application configuration file

• basecamp_projectURL: project URL excluding the HTTP/HTTPS prefix
• basecamp_userName/basecamp_password: user/password that has access to the desired project
• basecamp_secureMode: true if using HTTPS, false otherwise

  BasecampManager b = new BasecampManager();

Option 2: Set connection details at construction

BasecampManager b = new BasecampManager(url, username, pwd, secure);

Option 3: Override configuration values

BasecampManager b = new BasecampManager();
b.Url = "myproject.projectpath.com";
b.Username = "myusername";
b.Password = "mypassword";
b.SecureMode = false;

Step 2) Call Methods to Retrieve/Update Data

IList <Project> projects = b.GetProjects();

That's it! Have fun investigating and using the other methods I wrapped. I hope you find this very simple and hopefully useful.

What I Didn't Do and What You Might Want To Improve

• There are a couple places in the Basecamp API that different responses contain slightly different object signatures. For example: Company is returned differently when contained in a project than when selecting a list of companies. I created a couple constructors that take this into account, but may have missed some of the finer points on this one.
• There are also some attributes that don't get passed depending on the requestor's permission level. For now, I only wrap these in a try/catch that swallows any exceptions. Person.Parse is a good example of this.
• I had some DateTime variables that I had to set to 1/1/1900 instead of null. Person.Parse is a good example of this.
• I did not implement time-tracking or some of the modify (update/add/delete) for all methods.
• While I tested the methods, I found that updating/deleting comments was not working. I'm not sure if this was me, or something with the Basecamp API.
• You may find that your Basecamp data causes unhandled exceptions when trying to load the .NET objects since you may have data in your projects that I do not and did not test.

Credit

I must give credit for the beginning implementation of BasecampManager. I used the API I found by Munsifali Rashid at http://www.munit.co.uk/blog/2006/04/17/c-wrapper-for-basecamp-api/. I modified it slightly according to a post on the Basecamp forum:

webRequest.ServicePoint.Expect100Continue = false;