README.md

ClrHttpRequest

SQL Server CLR function for running REST methods over HTTP.

To download the latest version, please visit the Releases page.

This project is a fork of the project initially published By Eilert Hjelmeseth, 2018/10/11 here: http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/SQLCLR/177834/

Eilert's GitHub project: https://github.com/eilerth/sqlclr-http-request

My version extends the project by adding the following:

• Usage of TLS1.2 security protocol (nowadays a global standard).
• Two new authentication methods:
  • Authorization-Basic-Credentials (Basic authorization using Base64 credentials)
  • Authorization-Network-Credentials (creates a new NetworkCredential object and assigns it to the Credentials property of the request)
• Added support for using a Proxy with a new "Proxy" header in the form of URI:PORT. For example: <Header Name="Proxy">https://acmeproxy:4321</Header>
• Addition of a proper PreDeployment script which takes care of CLR assembly signing without requiring the TRUSTWORTHY database setting.
• Added UTF8 encoding support instead of ASCII.
• Added support for case-insensitive headers.

The following code was added in clr_http_request.cs, line 19:

ServicePointManager.SecurityProtocol = SecurityProtocolType.Tls12;

The following code was added in line 79 to add support for special headers:

	case "Authorization-Basic-Credentials":
		request.Headers.Add("Authorization", "Basic " + Convert.ToBase64String(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(headerValue)));
		break;
	case "Authorization-Network-Credentials":
		var netCredValues = headerValue.Split(':');
		if (netCredValues.Length < 2)
		{
			throw new FormatException("When specifying Authorization-Network-Credentials headers, please set the value in a format of username:password");
		}
		request.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(netCredValues[0], netCredValues[1]);
		break;
	case "Proxy":
		var proxyValues = headerValue.Split(':');
		if (proxyValues.Length < 2)
		{
			throw new FormatException("When specifying the PROXY header, please set the value in a format of URI:PORT");
		}
		int proxyPort;
		if (!int.TryParse(proxyValues[1], out proxyPort))
		{
			throw new FormatException("When specifying the PROXY header in the format of URI:PORT, the PORT must be numeric");
		}
		WebProxy myproxy = new WebProxy(proxyValues[0], proxyPort);
		myproxy.BypassProxyOnLocal = false;
		request.Proxy = myproxy;
		break;

These changes allow the SQL Server function to work with advanced services such as Zendesk. For example:

-- Credentials info: Username (email address) must be followed by /token when using API key
DECLARE @credentials NVARCHAR(4000) = 'agent@company_domain.com/token:api_token_key_here'
DECLARE @headers NVARCHAR(4000) = '<Headers><Header Name="Content-Type">application/json</Header><Header Name="Authorization-Basic-Credentials">' + @credentials + '</Header></Headers>'

-- Global Zendesk Settings:
DECLARE @zendesk_address NVARCHAR(400) = 'https://your_subdomain_here.zendesk.com'

-- Look for existing tickets based on @RequesterEmail:
SET @uri = @zendesk_address + '/api/v2/search.json?query=type:ticket status<solved requester:' + @RequesterEmail

DECLARE @tickets NVARCHAR(MAX), @ticket NVARCHAR(MAX)

-- This is where the magic happens:
SET @tickets = [dbo].[clr_http_request]
        (
            'GET',
            @uri,
            NULL,
            @headers,
            300000,
            0,
            0
        ).value('/Response[1]/Body[1]', 'NVARCHAR(MAX)')

-- check if ticket exists based on @Subject:
SELECT @ticket = [value]
FROM OPENJSON(@tickets, '$.results')
WHERE JSON_VALUE([value], '$.subject') = @Subject
AND JSON_VALUE([value], '$.status') IN ('new', 'open', 'pending')

SELECT uri = JSON_VALUE(@ticket, '$.url'), submitter = JSON_VALUE(@ticket, '$.submitter_id')

For more use cases visit here: https://github.com/EitanBlumin/ClrHttpRequest/blob/master/UseCases.md

For more info on using the Zendesk API, visit here: https://developer.zendesk.com/rest_api/docs/core/introduction