topic Re: .NET SDK with Qlik Sense Business in Integration, Extension & APIs

.NET SDK with Qlik Sense Business

berndpodhradsky — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 01:23:26 GMT

Hi everyone!

Currently the .NET SDK does not support to connect to a Qlik Sense Business instance. Are there any plans to include that functionality in the near future? Or what are alternative solutions?

Kind Regards,
Bernd

Re: .NET SDK with Qlik Sense Business

Øystein_Kolsrud — Fri, 25 Sep 2020 07:52:55 GMT

You should be able to use JWT authentication if you can produce an API key. The endpoint to use is "location.AsJwtViaProxy", and though it's originally intended to use with an on-site Enterprise proxy, it works with cloud as well. I've never tried with Qlik Sense Business though, so there might be some special configurations involved to enable that type of authentication, but this is what it look like when I connect to QCS:

// Get appId using rest client. var restClient = new RestClient(url); restClient.AsJwtViaQcs(token); var appInfo = restClient.Get<JObject>("/api/v1/items?resourceType=app&name=" + appName)["data"].First(); var appId = new AppIdentifier {AppId = appInfo["resourceId"].Value<string>()}; // Get properties of the app. var location = Location.FromUri(url); location.AsJwtViaProxy(token); using (var app = location.App(appId)) { Console.WriteLine(app.GetAppProperties().ToString()); }

A difference from when connecting to Qlik Sense Enterprise is that you must use a session with a valid appId when connecting. So just doing "location.Hub()" won't work. In the example above I'm using Newtonsoft for JSON handling and the following library for REST access:

https://www.nuget.org/packages/QlikSenseRestClient/

Re: .NET SDK with Qlik Sense Business

Øystein_Kolsrud — Fri, 25 Sep 2020 07:50:52 GMT

And the specification for that REST endpoint I use can be found here: https://qlik.dev/apis/rest/items

Re: .NET SDK with Qlik Sense Business

berndpodhradsky — Sat, 26 Sep 2020 01:40:28 GMT

Hi!

Thanks a lot, that did the trick. The only thing we haven't managed to get working.

In on-premise Qlik Sense installations we create a custom session, perform some filtering with API Calls and then embed a visualization into a webpage using the &identity parameter which holds the ID of the custom session that we have created; thus, the API calls and the embedded visualization share a single custom session and API calls in the background affect the visualization.

With Qlik Sense Business however, it seems to ignore the &identity parameter. Any hint you can give me as to why that would be the case? Or anything else to consider?

Thanks,
Bernd

Re: .NET SDK with Qlik Sense Business

Øystein_Kolsrud — Thu, 01 Oct 2020 14:09:19 GMT

I'm afraid I'm not familiar with how that session identification works in the cloud product, so can't help you there.

Re: .NET SDK with Qlik Sense Business

berndpodhradsky — Thu, 01 Oct 2020 14:14:54 GMT

Hi!

Thanks! Any idea who I can turn to in order to get more information about that?

Bernd

Re: .NET SDK with Qlik Sense Business

Øystein_Kolsrud — Fri, 02 Oct 2020 10:50:34 GMT

Looks like I figured it out! The trick is to explicitly set the "SessionToken" property of the "Session" object used when connecting. If you set this to the empty string, then you'll connect to the same session as what you get when you connect with the client. So like this:

var location = Location.FromUri(url); location.AsJwtViaProxy(token); var session = Session.WithApp(appId); session.SessionToken = ""; using (var app = location.App(appId, session)) { Console.WriteLine(app.Evaluate("=Count(distinct Dim1)")); }

The number that code prints will depend on the selection state of the client. If you want to connect to a different session, then you can set a different value for "SessionToken", like this:

var session = Session.WithApp(appId); session.SessionToken = "MyToken";

If you don't set "SessionToken" or use the "sessionToken" argument of the "WithApp" method, then you'll get a configuration that is designed for the needs of QSEfW (including that "identity" part that you mentioned). The needs for QCS is different here, and explicitly setting that "SessionToken" property will override the default behavior.

Re: .NET SDK with Qlik Sense Business

berndpodhradsky — Sat, 03 Oct 2020 02:25:50 GMT

Hi!

Thanks. Tried it out, but unfortunately didn't work. It sets the filters within the session, that's correct. But the chart (even though I use the "&identity" query string parameter) still displays an unfiltered set of values.

Bernd

Re: .NET SDK with Qlik Sense Business

Øystein_Kolsrud — Sat, 03 Oct 2020 07:14:41 GMT

Don't use the "&identity" query string parameter. It won't work in QCS. You need to set the header X-Qlik-Session when you connect. It is into that header that the "SessionToken" value goes. The QCS client doesn't set that header by default, so omitting that header or setting it to the empty string gives you the same session as the client per default connects to. If you set that header in the browser to any other value, and use the same value in the "SessionToken" property as described above, then both will connect to the same session which is independent of the one you get if you don't use the header.

Re: .NET SDK with Qlik Sense Business

berndpodhradsky — Sat, 03 Oct 2020 11:33:06 GMT

Hi!

Hm... something's not quite working as expected. Let me wrap it up. Here's what I do:

_location = Location.FromUri(....)
Location.AsJwtViaProxy(...)

_session = Session.withApp(appId)
_session.SessionToken = "a random GUID"

_app = _location.App(appId, _session)

Interestingly, at this point the _location object has a custom header property with an X-Qlik-Session already set (but different from my randomly generated GUID). I suspect that this is the default session.

Then I perform some filters on the _app and after that I set the X-Qlik-Session cookie of a browser to the random GUID I previously created and open a single URL (without the identity query string). However, the object still displays as if nothing was filtered. If I remove all the custom session token stuff, the object displays correctly, but of course the session is then the shared one, which wouldn't work in our scenario.

I even tried to set the "X-Qlik-Session" header of the _location object to the randomly created GUID but that doesn't change anything.

Not sure where exactly I'm going the wrong way, but can you confirm that in your solution you can actually view a visualization using that method which displays correctly within a custom session?

Thanks for your help!

Bernd

Re: .NET SDK with Qlik Sense Business

Øystein_Kolsrud — Sat, 03 Oct 2020 12:45:55 GMT

That is certainly odd... But yes I can confirm that I can see the visualization with the correct selection state. I have connected to the same app in both Firefox and Chrome. Then in Chrome I'm using a plugin to modify headers, and there I've added a header named "X-Qlik-Session" with the value "MyToken". I can see that this makes the selection state independent between the two browser. So if I do a selection in Chrome, then that won't propagate to my session in Firefox. If I disable the custom header in Chrome, then the selection state is correctly synced between the two browsers.

Then what I have done is to make a selection in Chrome (with the header enabled), and then do a .NET SDK connection to the same app according the the description above where I explicitly set the "SessionToken" property to "MyToken". I can then see that the selection state of the session I get through the SDK is the same as the one I have in Chrome. I take it this is the behavior you are looking for?

Re: .NET SDK with Qlik Sense Business

berndpodhradsky — Sat, 03 Oct 2020 13:38:49 GMT

That's strange. I think we're pretty close to the solution but there's something I must be missing. Would you mind sharing a small .NET solution with your working code where I can paste my API key, URL and AppID?

Bernd

Re: .NET SDK with Qlik Sense Business

Øystein_Kolsrud — Sun, 04 Oct 2020 07:08:13 GMT

This is it ("url", "token" and "appId" are all strings):

static void Main(string[] args) { var location = Location.FromUri(url); location.AsJwtViaProxy(token); var appIdentifier = new AppIdentifier {AppId = appId}; var session = Session.WithApp(appIdentifier); session.SessionToken = "MyToken"; using (var app = location.App(appIdentifier, session)) { Console.WriteLine(app.Evaluate("=Count(distinct Dim1)")); } }

My guess is that the problem you are facing is related to that unexpected "X-Qlik-Session" value that you observed. Try to trace where that is coming from! The default session value will not be a GUID when you use "Session.WithApp", but a string of the form "/app/<appId>".

Re: .NET SDK with Qlik Sense Business

berndpodhradsky — Mon, 05 Oct 2020 01:36:01 GMT

Hi!

The X-Qlik-Session I get is not a GUID but in the form you mentioned; so it seems to be the default token.

Unfortunately things still don't work on my end and I'll try out different things. However, to be honest it's quite frustrating that this is nowhere documented. Wouldn't it make much more sense for Qlik to provide an API that takes care of that stuff under the hood and gives developers a single, uniform experience?

Trying not to complain too much here and I hope you don't get it wrong :). But at the end of the day we're trying to devliver enterprise-ready solutions and it's a bit hard to do that if the feature we're implementing seems to be a bit shaky and undocumented (and could change with every update of QSB, because it's an unofficial way of doing it).

In addition to that the fact that Qlik might throttle API calls and simply reject their execution doesn't help either :).

Bernd

Re: .NET SDK with Qlik Sense Business

Øystein_Kolsrud — Mon, 05 Oct 2020 06:48:00 GMT

I feel your pain... The main source of information about QCS related APIs is this site:

https://qlik.dev/

It contains a lot of useful information, but a description of how that session identification works is missing today. You might want to write a note using the "leave feedback" functionality of that site. Such feedback is typically very much appreciated and quite useful for prioritization purposes.

But back to the thread... When you write "things still don't work on my end", do you mean that the code I sent doesn't work for you or that the code you wrote still isn't working?

Re: .NET SDK with Qlik Sense Business

berndpodhradsky — Mon, 05 Oct 2020 07:18:56 GMT

Hi!

The code works, but that scenario has always worked for me. But if I filter a field using the .NET SDK and then open a visualization in a browser with the session header, it displays as if the filter wasn‘t there.

Bernd

Re: .NET SDK with Qlik Sense Business

Øystein_Kolsrud — Tue, 10 Nov 2020 14:55:50 GMT

FYI: The latest release of the SDK includes a new class designed for interacting with a QCS location:

https://help.qlik.com/en-US/sense-developer/November2020/Subsystems/NetSDKAPIref/Content/Qlik.Sense.JsonRpc.QcsLocation.htm

Using that class, you should be able to define your connection like this:

var location = QcsLocation.FromUri(uri); location.AsApiKey(apiKey); using (var app = location.App(appId, SessionToken.Custom("MyToken"))) { Console.WriteLine(app.GetAppProperties().Title); }