Working with the REST API in SharePoint Framework (SPFx)

The SharePoint Framework reached GA recently. You can see the release notes here: https://github.com/SharePoint/sp-dev-docs/wiki/Release-Notes-GA

One of these changes from the preview versions was how REST requests are handled when talking to SharePoint. Lets have a look at what changed and also see some code samples I created when tinkering around with the latest changes.

Before that, you should know that I have also updated my previous SPFx REST API related posts for the SPFx GA version. If you are interested, you can have a look here:

Batch REST requests in SharePoint Framework (SPFx) using SPHttpClientBatch

Making a POST request to SharePoint from an SPFx webpart

1) SPHttpClient, SPHttpClientConfiguration and the '@microsoft/sp-http' package

The HttpContext and all REST API related operations are part of the @microsoft/sp-http package.

The class SPHttpClient has inbuilt get and post methods which make it really easy to query SharePoint. The methods automatically add headers such as ODataVersion and Request Digest which are needed when making a REST call to SharePoint.

The SPHttpClientConfiguration class can be used to either let default headers be set on the REST request or it also allows you to override certain headers if needed. Lets have a look at this:

2) GET requests

Making GET requests to SharePoint is really easy when you specify the SPHttpClientConfiguration as SPHttpClientConfigurations.v1. It sets the following headers to your REST request. You don't have to set any headers manually.

consoleLogging = true;
jsonRequest = true;
jsonResponse = true;
defaultSameOriginCredentials = true;
defaultODataVersion = ODataVersion.v4;
requestDigest = true

First, you will need to import the required modules from the @microsoft/sp-http package as mentioned earlier:

Then use this code to make a GET request to SharePoint. The following code makes 3 different requests to SharePoint. The first one gets the current web, the second one gets the current user from the User Information List and the third one gets the current user properties from the User Profile Service:

3) POST requests

For making a POST request, you have to use the SPHttpClient.post method. I have a separate post around this. Check it out here: http://www.vrdmn.com/2016/08/making-post-request-to-sharepoint-from.html

4) Calling SharePoint Search REST API with OData Version 3

With the preview SPFx versions, the default OData Version attached with each SPFx REST request was 4. This caused the calls to the SharePoint Search REST Api to fail and return a "500 Internal Server Error" as the search API would only work with Odata Version 3.0.

The issue is discussed on GitHub SPFx repo here: https://github.com/SharePoint/sp-dev-docs/issues/44

As a result of that, SPFx now provides you a way to override the default headers sent with the REST request:

Thanks for reading! All the code for this, as always, is on GitHub: https://github.com/vman/SPFx-REST-Operations