Using Azure Mobile Services client SDK with non azure hosted custom API

Question

I'm new to Azure Mobile Services so this may be a stupid question, but I like the look of working with the client SDK especially the offline sync framework. (I haven't seen any other offline client sync frameworks in c# that would work with Xamarin)

But unfortunately I am not building the API and instead I'm working against an existing web API which cannot be changed or moved to azure hosting.

Is this scenario possible and has anyone got this working? If so, are there any standards that my API would need to conform to (above a standard asp.net web api with correct http verbs)

Answer 1

Right now, the client SDK is hard coded to only make calls to <mobile service url>/table/, etc. The team is looking at options of letting the client SDK consume other endpoints, but that will be awhile yet.

You could possibly do this using an HttpHandler, and changing any outgoing HTTP request to another URL. (IE. look for /table/tablename and redirect it to your custom path) But that would get pretty messy at this point.

Its also possible to wrap the call to the API from the within the mobile services SDK as well. It will be cleaner than the above, with the drawback of adding another middle man. However if their shape is incompatible with that required by offline, it will be easier to tweak it into the expected format.