We Keep Coding

Get a company followers count on LinkedIn

I'm trying to get the number of followers of a company on Linked in.
I use this code:
HttpWebRequest request = WebRequest.Create("http://api.linkedin.com/v1/companies/?id=SomeCompanyID:(num-followers)") as HttpWebRequest;
request.Method = "Get";
request.Credentials = new NetworkCredential("MyAppClientID", "MyAppClientSecret");
using (HttpWebResponse response = request.GetResponse() as HttpWebResponse) // I'm getting "(401) Unauthorized" exception at this line.
{
StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream());
string result = reader.ReadToEnd();
System.IO.File.WriteAllText(#"WriteText.txt", result);
Console.WriteLine(reader.ReadToEnd());
}
I'm not sure about my syntax and the way I provide credentials, but I don't know how to do so correctly, and documentation is not clear at this point.
Your help is appreciated.

It looks like you haven't registered your application or more accurately you haven't updated the code sample with your own ClientKey and Secret value.
You obtain them from https://www.linkedin.com/developer/apps/
You can also find more information about it here https://developer.linkedin.com/support/faq
Where can I find my API key?
Click on the My Apps link in the top navigation menu to manage your
LinkedIn applications.
From here, you can create a new application if you don't already have
one or view the details of your existing applications. You will find
your Client ID (otherwise known as API Key/ID or Consumer Key/ID)
listed in the "Authentication" side nav link, underneath the header
"Authentication Keys".
Alternatively, you may be using an old format of Rest API call, accoring to this page (https://developer.linkedin.com/docs/company-pages), the new format is as follows
https://api.linkedin.com/v1/companies/{id}/num-followers?format=json
Get a company's followers, by segment
If you choose to target content that you share on behalf of a company,
there is a minumum number of followers that must make up the segment
you are targeting before you will be able to successfully share the
targeted content. This request allows you to get a follower-count for
a specific segment to ensure you are at or over the minimum
requirement for the target segment for the company specified by the
{id} value in the request. Optional Parameters
https://api.linkedin.com/v1/companies/{id}/num-followers?format=json
sample response
1147037

upload feed to walmart

I am breaking my head trying to upload a feed to walmart, after many times trying i used postman to generate C# restsharp code for me, in postman it works, but when using the c# restsharp code it returns a mysterious error. like this:
"No message body writer has been found for response class FeedAcknowledgement"
what does that mean?
here is my code:
string requestUrl = "";
requestUrl = string.Format("https://marketplace.walmartapis.com/v2/feeds?feedType=inventory");
string method = "POST";
// string[] sig = getSig(method, requestUrl).Replace("\r", "").Split('\n');
var mySig = new Signature(ConsumerID, SecretKEY, requestUrl, method);
var s = mySig.TimeStamp;
var returendSigniture = mySig.GetSignature(s);
var client = new RestClient("https://marketplace.walmartapis.com/v2/feeds?feedType=inventory");
var request = new RestRequest(Method.POST);
//request.AddHeader("postman-token", "c325ba5f-813a-f990-7899-6bfc4b14aa1b");
request.AddHeader("cache-control", "no-cache");
request.AddHeader("content-type", "multipart/form-data; boundary=----WebKitFormBoundary7MA4YWxkTrZu0gW");
request.AddHeader("accept", "application/xml");
request.AddHeader("wm_consumer.id", "--");
request.AddHeader("wm_sec.auth_signature", returendSigniture);
request.AddHeader("wm_sec.timestamp", mySig.TimeStamp);
request.AddHeader("wm_qos.correlation_id", "123456abcdef");
request.AddHeader("wm_svc.name", "Walmart Marketplace");
request.AddParameter("multipart/form-data; boundary=----WebKitFormBoundary7MA4YWxkTrZu0gW", "------WebKitFormBoundary7MA4YWxkTrZu0gW\r\nContent-Disposition: form-data; name=\"BOUNDERY\"\r\n\r\n<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"utf-8\"?>\n<wm:inventory xmlns:wm=\"http://walmart.com/\">\n <wm:sku>PP00500-2PC</wm:sku>\n <wm:quantity>\n <wm:unit>EACH</wm:unit>\n <wm:amount>120</wm:amount>\n </wm:quantity>\n <wm:fulfillmentLagTime>1</wm:fulfillmentLagTime>\n</wm:inventory>\r\n------WebKitFormBoundary7MA4YWxkTrZu0gW--", ParameterType.RequestBody);
IRestResponse response = client.Execute(request);

I spent all day in figuring out how to request Walmart v3. I propose you the following two steps:
Use Walmart signer in order to generate signed token.
You will need to use HttpWebRequest for getting response from Walmart in a way similar to what is described here.

I have not been able to get this to work natively in C#, but I do have a work around.
The Java SDK can successfully submit multi-part requests to Walmart. I wrote a wrapper around the SDK functions that can accept basic command line input to read a text file and send the appropriate call with attached files. From here, you can just call the .jar file (I do it via dynamically generated batch file) from your C# program and receive responses back via text file. This is a sub-optimal system, but it works reliably and when the choice was between updating inventory on 2000 items every day and using some dirty code, I went with the Java wrapper method. This will be replaced as soon as the C# SDK comes out, but I believe this is one of the reasons why the C# SDK may be being delayed.
This solution was used, only after spending about a week trying to get boundaries / streams / attachments to work in C# and having zero success. Cases were also submitted to walmart and I was able to work with some of their top tier engineering support staff and this problem completely stumped them. I was able to trace the Java SDK execution all the way down to a built in Maven / Java function that constructed the web request so there's something under the hood that Java is doing with a multi-part request that isn't immediately clear in C#.

How to enable gzip compression in Simple OData Client?

I'm trying to perform a query that retrieves information from a CRM Dynamics with the Simple OData Client library like this (C#):
var settings = new ODataClientSettings(resource + "/api/data/v8.0/");
settings.BeforeRequest = (request) =>
{
request.Headers.Clear();
request.Headers.Add("Authorization", accesstoken.AccessTokenType + " " + accesstoken.AccessToken);
};
settings.PayloadFormat = ODataPayloadFormat.Json;
var client = new ODataClient(settings);
var annotations = new ODataFeedAnnotations();
var transactions = await client.For("mss_transaccions").FindEntriesAsync(annotations);
while (annotations.NextPageLink != null)
{
transactions = transactions.Union(await client.For("mss_transaccions").FindEntriesAsync(annotations.NextPageLink, annotations));
}
While this works, it is extremely slow because my query on the mss_transaccions table has 7200 entities. I'm looking at the output in Fiddler and I can see that it is trying to download about 20 MB of information.
I tried to run the same query on Google Chrome, and I could see that by default the obtained response is compressed in gzip format, going from 20MB to some mere 500KB. So I'm deducing that Simple OData Client is not doing any kind of compression, and that's why it is so tremendously slow.
In addition, the request from OData Simple Client asks for metadata information, which adds another 4MB, while Chrome or a simple HttpClient request do not need to make that call.
Is there anything I can do to improve that and enable compression?
Thank you.

In your BeforeRequest action, add the Accept-Encoding header as follows:
settings.BeforeRequest = (request) =>
{
// ... other headers as above
request.Headers.Add("Accept-Encoding", "gzip");
};

I've been able to finally enable compression and speed up the overall process. The whole discussion can be found here: https://github.com/object/Simple.OData.Client/issues/238
To lay it down simply and quickly, you just need to modify the message handler in the ODataSettings instance with the following piece of code:
settings.OnApplyClientHandler = handler =>
{
handler.AutomaticDecompression = DecompressionMethods.GZip | DecompressionMethods.Deflate;
};
Now the httpRequests are sent as gzip,deflate and decompressed on response properly.

If you inspect which headers is sending Chrome and try to replicate them in C#?
Also, If I have to access CRM from C#, I would use the Microsoft.Xrm.Sdk as opposed to OData. You have loads of proxy types and requests that will allow you to write code much more cleaner. OData has other limitations which QueryExpressions / CRM LINQ / FetchXml don't have too.
OData would make more sense for JS code (i.e. requests from a CRM form).

How to create an otrs ticket using a soap request

The lack of documentation on this subject coupled with the fact that I'm struggling with a learning curve on all fronts and making me really confused about where to start. I need to get this done using C# if possible. I apologize for the vagueness of this question, but I'm really lost. I would love links to comprehensive guides/references.
In my efforts to get this done, I've run into the following problems/questions:
I've created a web service using the otrs gui, with the operation CreateTicket, but requests via C# to my chosen namespace are returning 404 (not found). When I try to add a service reference or web reference with that namespace, I get the same error. However, when I plug that namespace into my browser as the url, it displays "customer.pl".
Can I send a soap request without adding the web service as a service reference in visual studio? Given the previous problem I'm having I can't do it that way. Would I just build the soap request string and write it to the web request's data stream with http://domain/rpc.pl as the uri?
If the answer to the previous question is yes... When trying the below code segment I get an internal server error (500) on the last line. However the header looks like a SOAP header which confuses me because I wouldn't have thought it got that far.
var document = new StringBuilder();
document.Append("<UserLogin>some user login</UserLogin>");
document.Append("<Password>some password</Password> ");
document.Append("<Ticket>");
document.Append("<Title>some title</Title> ");
document.Append("<CustomerUser>some customer user login</CustomerUser>");
document.Append("<Queue>some queue</Queue>");
document.Append("<State>some state</State>");
document.Append("<Priority>some priority</Priority>");
document.Append("</Ticket>");
document.Append("<Article>");
document.Append("<Subject>some subject</Subject>");
document.Append("<Body>some body</Body>");
document.Append("<ContentType>text/plain; charset=utf8</ContentType>");
document.Append("</Article>");
//var uri = new Uri("http://domain/injest");
var uri = new Uri("http://domain/rpc.pl");
var httpWebReq = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(uri);
var bytePostData = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(document.ToString());
httpWebReq.Timeout = 5 * 1000;
httpWebReq.Method = "POST";
httpWebReq.ContentLength = bytePostData.Length;
httpWebReq.ContentType = "text/xml;charset=utf-8";
//httpWebReq.TransferEncoding=
//httpWebReq.ContentType = "application/xml";
//httpWebReq.Accept = "application/xml";
var dataStream = httpWebReq.GetRequestStream();
dataStream.Write(bytePostData, 0, bytePostData.Length);
dataStream.Close();
var httpWebResponse = (HttpWebResponse)httpWebReq.GetResponse();
Even if all you can offer is where to start, it would help me to know how to proceed, as I'm stumped.

You're using the rpc.pl endpoint which is part of the 'old' RPC-style interface.
You mention you added the web service via the GUI which means you're using the 'new' Generic Interface, which is indeed much easier from .Net.
The address of the endpoint is /otrs/nph-genericinterface.pl/Webservice/GenericTicketConnector or whatever you have called the web service in the admin section.

Reading and posting to web pages using C#

I have a project at work the requires me to be able to enter information into a web page, read the next page I get redirected to and then take further action. A simplified real-world example would be something like going to google.com, entering "Coding tricks" as search criteria, and reading the resulting page.
Small coding examples like the ones linked to at http://www.csharp-station.com/HowTo/HttpWebFetch.aspx tell how to read a web page, but not how to interact with it by submitting information into a form and continuing on to the next page.
For the record, I'm not building a malicious and/or spam related product.
So how do I go read web pages that require a few steps of normal browsing to reach first?

You can programmatically create an Http request and retrieve the response:
string uri = "http://www.google.com/search";
HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(uri);
request.Method = "POST";
request.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";
// encode the data to POST:
string postData = "q=searchterm&hl=en";
byte[] encodedData = new ASCIIEncoding().GetBytes(postData);
request.ContentLength = encodedData.Length;
Stream requestStream = request.GetRequestStream();
requestStream.Write(encodedData, 0, encodedData.Length);
// send the request and get the response
using (HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse())
{
// Do something with the response stream. As an example, we'll
// stream the response to the console via a 256 character buffer
using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream()))
{
Char[] buffer = new Char[256];
int count = reader.Read(buffer, 0, 256);
while (count > 0)
{
Console.WriteLine(new String(buffer, 0, count));
count = reader.Read(buffer, 0, 256);
}
} // reader is disposed here
} // response is disposed here
Of course, this code will return an error since Google uses GET, not POST, for search queries.
This method will work if you are dealing with specific web pages, as the URLs and POST data are all basically hard-coded. If you needed something that was a little more dynamic, you'd have to:
Capture the page
Strip out the form
Create a POST string based on the form fields
FWIW, I think something like Perl or Python might be better suited to that sort of task.
edit: x-www-form-urlencoded

You might try Selenium. Record the actions in Firefox using Selenium IDE, save the script in C# format, then play them back using the Selenium RC C# wrapper. As others have mentioned you could also use System.Net.HttpWebRequest or System.Net.WebClient. If this is a desktop application see also System.Windows.Forms.WebBrowser.
Addendum: Similar to Selenium IDE and Selenium RC, which are Java-based, WatiN Test Recorder and WatiN are .NET-based.

What you need to do is keep retrieving and analyzing the html source for each page in the chain. For each page, you need to figure out what the form submission will look like and send a request that will match that to get the next page in the chain.
What I do is build a custom class the wraps System.Net.HttpWebRequest/HttpWebResponse, so retrieving pages is as simple as using System.Net.WebClient. However, my custom class also keeps the same cookie container across requests and makes it a little easier to send post data, customize the user agent, etc.

Depending on how the website works you can either manipulate the url to perform what you want. e.g to search for the word "beatles" you could just open a request to google.com?q=beetles and then just read the results.
Alternatively if the website does not use querystring values (url) to process page actions then you will need to work on a webrequest which posts the required values to the website instead. Search in Google for working with WebRequest and webresponse.