Trust Pilot is an online review application which enables
consumers to share reviews and experiences on the site they make purchases on.
The major difference with Trustpilot and other review platforms is that it is
open to the public. Trustpilot see this level of transparency as a benefit to
both consumers and companies.
Ratings
Consumers can rate their experience using the 5 stars on top
of their review. One star means very poor experience and five star marked in
green being excellent. Overall ratings for the site a check mark in green or
red Green means the site has a good rating and red is a sign to stay away – the
site has mostly negative reviews and lots of user complaints.
ASP.NET API
Traditionally Trustpilot provides a means of integration by
providing a piece of code to be copied and pasted within the reviews page on a
particular site. The HTML code is in the
form of an iframe which you can paste on a page to display the reviews matching
the style chosen in the administration side of the application.
When working with Trustpilot’s widget we wanted to customise
our iframe for our client and control how the frame is displayed. This proved
to be difficult as the frame is hosted by Trustpilot, and there are no reliable
means to inject styling to the iframe. Using Javascript we tried to embed our
CSS file within the head tag of the iframe, however because of security reasons
this was restricted.
The trouble here is it is not easy to find information about
how to customise your widget, and after a lot of searches on Google we stumbled
upon a link which spoke about an API used by TrustPilot. On the development
side of the Trustpilot site, which is not very easy to find, there is
documentation on how to integrate the widget using the API.
How it Works
Trustpilot provides a JSON feed in a form of a zip file, to
set of models in C#.NET. The Feed Model downloads the zip file, parses the
JSON and uses System.Web.Caching for
caching the results, ensuring that the user does not have to wait for the
server to download the feed and parse it every time. Once the feed has been
downloaded it is parsed into separate models. That pretty much completes the
complicated part of getting your reviews to your server. The next step is displaying the reviews to
the front end, which can be done anyway you like.
Six Simple steps using VB.NET.
The code provided by Trustpilot is all in C#, so the task
for us was to convert it all to VB.NET. Using online code convertors we managed to
convert models to VB.Net. Below are the steps to implement the model.
Step 1: Check Cache
'
Check if we have a feed in the cache
Const
CACHE_KEY As String
= "PluginsAspxSample.Default.Feed"
Dim
cachedFeed = TryCast(Cache.[Get](CACHE_KEY),
FeedModel)
If cachedFeed
IsNot Nothing Then
Return
cachedFeed
End If
Step 2: Web Request
'
You url can be found on http://b2b.trustpilot.com/Modules/Plugins, where you
also find the documentation.
Const
URL As String =
"http://s.trustpilot.com/tpelements/1195944/f.json.gz"
Dim
request = DirectCast(WebRequest.Create(URL),
HttpWebRequest)
request.Method =
WebRequestMethods.Http.[Get]
request.AutomaticDecompression =
DecompressionMethods.GZip
Step 3: Download Data
'
Download the json data
Dim
feedData As String
Using
response = DirectCast(request.GetResponse(),
HttpWebResponse)
Using
responseStream = response.GetResponseStream()
feedData = New StreamReader(responseStream).ReadToEnd()
End
Using
End Using
Step 4: Deserialize Date
'
Deserialize the json
Dim
feed = New JavaScriptSerializer().Deserialize(Of FeedModel)(feedData)
Step 5: Cache Data
'
Add to cache
Cache.Add(CACHE_KEY, feed, dependencies:=Nothing,
absoluteExpiration:=Cache.NoAbsoluteExpiration, slidingExpiration:=New TimeSpan(hours:=0, minutes:=1, seconds:=0),
priority:=CacheItemPriority.Normal, _
onRemoveCallback:=Nothing)
Finally: Return the feed
' Return the
feed
Return
feed
Front page HTML
<div class="reviews">
<% For Each review In
Feed.Reviews.Take(4)%>
<div class="item">
<img src='<%=review.TrustScore.StarsImageUrls("small")%>' class="stars"
alt="review
stars"/>
<%Dim time As DateTime = review.Created.Human%>
<%Dim format As String = "d MMM "%>
<span class="date"><%=time.ToString(format)%></span>
<h3><%= review.Title %></h3>
<p class="desc"><%=Shorten(review.Content,
125)%>
<a href="<%= Feed.ReviewPageUrl %>" target="_blank">Read more</a></p>
<div class="author">
<img src='<%= review.User.ImageUrls("i24")%>' alt='<%= review.User.Name %>' class="user-img"
/>
<p>
<%= review.User.Name %>
<% If (review.User.City
<> String.Empty) Then%>
<br />
<%= review.User.City %>
<% End If%>
</p>
</div>
<div class="clear"></div>
</div>
<% Next%>
</div>
We came across a few problems while converting the code. The
first problem was dealing with the caching of the data as C# and VB use
different mechanisms. The next problem we encountered was linking each one of
our posts to the exact post on Trustpilot web page. To overcome this we linked
to the Trustpilot reviews page only.
Useful Links
Trust Pilot: http://www.trustpilot.co.uk/
Trust Pilot Developers Section: http://trustpilot.github.com/developers/#netsample
JSON feed format: http://trustpilot.github.com/developers/#jsondoc
