Develop Reference

HttpWebRequest needs to wait 5 seconds to work properly in PUT method

I am trying to use an API and I don't have any problems with GET and POST but PUT isn't working. I tried with a lot of different examples and finally by chance I discovered that waiting more that 5 seconds (with 5000ms it is not working and with 5100ms it does) it starts working properly. But why is that happening? And how can I avoid this? 5 seconds for each registry update is to much waiting and I really don't understand why POST works well without waiting and PUT needs 5 seconds to work.
Here I put the method that I am using with the Thread.Sleep(5100). As I said without this line when I make WebResponse response = request.GetResponse(); gives me an error.
public void call(string url, object jsonObj)
{
try
{
// Create a request using a URL that can receive a post.
HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest) HttpWebRequest.Create(urlSplio);
// Create POST data and convert it to a byte array.
request.Method = "PUT";
// Set the ContentType property of the WebRequest.
request.ContentType = "application/json";
request.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(WebConfigurationManager.AppSettings["User"], "WebConfigurationManager.AppSettings["Key"]");
string json = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(jsonObj);
byte[] byteArray = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(json);
// Set the ContentLength property of the WebRequest.
request.ContentLength = byteArray.Length;
// Get the request stream.
Stream dataStream = request.GetRequestStream();
// Write the data to the request stream.
dataStream.Write(byteArray, 0, byteArray.Length);
// Close the Stream object.
dataStream.Close();
Thread.Sleep(5100);
// Get the response.
WebResponse response = request.GetResponse();
// Display the status.
Console.WriteLine(((HttpWebResponse)response).StatusDescription);
// Get the stream containing content returned by the server.
dataStream = response.GetResponseStream();
// Open the stream using a StreamReader for easy access.
StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(dataStream);
// Read the content.
string responseFromServer = reader.ReadToEnd();
// Display the content.
Console.WriteLine(responseFromServer);
// Clean up the streams.
dataStream.Close();
response.Close();
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
}
}

I think you might want to rewrite the response stream code
Take a look at this walkthrough on MS MS walkthrough
private byte[] GetURLContents(string url)
{
// The downloaded resource ends up in the variable named content.
var content = new MemoryStream();
// Initialize an HttpWebRequest for the current URL.
var webReq = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url);
// Send the request to the Internet resource and wait for
// the response.
// Note: you can't use HttpWebRequest.GetResponse in a Windows Store app.
using (WebResponse response = webReq.GetResponse())
{
// Get the data stream that is associated with the specified URL.
using (Stream responseStream = response.GetResponseStream())
{
// Read the bytes in responseStream and copy them to content.
responseStream.CopyTo(content);
}
}
// Return the result as a byte array.
return content.ToArray();
}

Making Synchronous xmlhttp request in code behind

I am attempting to send XML to a URL and read the response, but the response is coming back empty every time. I think this is because its being processed Asynchronously and so the receiving code hasn't had a chance to complete by the time I read the response. In Javascrpt I would use
xmlhttp.Open("POST", url, false);
to send a request Synchronously. How can I achieve it in C#?
My code is currently
HttpWebRequest objRequest = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url);
objRequest.Credentials = CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;
objRequest.Method = "POST";
objRequest.ContentType = "text/xml";
Stream dataStream = objRequest.GetRequestStream();
byte[] bytes = new byte[UpliftJobXMLString.Length * sizeof(char)];
System.Buffer.BlockCopy(UpliftJobXMLString.ToCharArray(), 0, bytes, 0, bytes.Length);
dataStream.Write(bytes, 0, bytes.Length);
dataStream.Close();
HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)objRequest.GetResponse();
System.IO.StreamReader sr = new System.IO.StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream());
string respString = System.Web.HttpUtility.HtmlDecode(sr.ReadToEnd()); //always empty
Thanks

I'm fairly certain that this is not an async issue. Have you checked what sr.ReadToEnd() returns before the HtmlDecode?
Furthermore, you should check that the server is returning what you're expecting for it to return. Check the response StatusCode and StatusDescription. If your server is throwing an internal server exception (500) or something similar, the response string you read would come up empty as the content of the response would not be sent by the server in the first place.

I don't think your problem is related to sync/async operations. Your code to convert the string to byte array
byte[] bytes = new byte[UpliftJobXMLString.Length * sizeof(char)];
System.Buffer.BlockCopy(UpliftJobXMLString.ToCharArray(), 0, bytes, 0, bytes.Length);
is similar to Unicode encoding(2 bytes per char).
See the differences among encodings
string UpliftJobXMLString = "abcÜ";
byte[] bytesASCII = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(UpliftJobXMLString);
byte[] bytesUTF8 = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(UpliftJobXMLString);
byte[] bytesUnicode = Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes(UpliftJobXMLString);
Therefore, either set the content-encoding to unicode or use another encoding. For ex;
objRequest.ContentType = "text/xml; charset=utf-8";

C# httpwebrequest blank chars in responsestream

I'm trying to read the reponse from a webserver using httpwebrequests in C#.
I use the following code:
UriBuilder urib = new UriBuilder();
urib.Host = "wikipedia.com";
HttpWebRequest req = WebRequest.CreateHttp(urib.Uri);
req.KeepAlive = false;
req.Host = "wikipedia.com/";
req.Method = "GET";
HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse) req.GetResponse();
byte[] buffer = new byte[response.ContentLength];
System.IO.Stream stream = response.GetResponseStream();
stream.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);
Console.WriteLine(System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetString(buffer, 0, buffer.Length));
The code does indeed retrieve the correct amount of data (I compared the contentlength used to create the buffer, with the length of the console output, they're the same.
My problem is that the last 80% or so of the response is blank chars. They're all 0x00.
I tested this with several pages, including wikipedia.com and it just cuts off mid-file for some reason.
Have I misunderstood/misused the way to use webrequests or can anyone spot an error here?

Try to use this method:
public static String GetResponseString(Uri url, CookieContainer cc)
{
HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)HttpWebRequest.Create(url);
request.Method = WebRequestMethods.Http.Get;
request.CookieContainer = cc;
request.AutomaticDecompression = DecompressionMethods.GZip;
HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream());
String responseString = reader.ReadToEnd();
response.Close();
return responseString;
}

There are a couple of issues with your code:
Your trying to read the entire response in one go using Stream.Read - that's not what it was designed for. This should be used for more optimal reading e.g. 4KB chunks.
Your reading a HTML response as ASCII encoding - are you sure the page doesn't contain any Unicode characters? I would stick to UTF-8 encoding to be on the safe side (or alternatively read the Content-Type header in the response).
When reading characters from a byte stream (which is what your response is essentially) the recommended approach is to use StreamReader. More specifically, if you want to read the entire stream in one go then use StreamReader.ReadToEnd.
Your code could be shortened to:
HttpWebRequest req = WebRequest.CreateHttp(new Uri("http://wikipedia.org"));
req.Method = WebRequestMethods.Http.Get;
using (var response = (HttpWebResponse)req.GetResponse())
using (var reader = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream()))
{
Console.WriteLine(reader.ReadToEnd());
}

Error while reading response from HttpWebRequest

I am trying to send contents of 1GB text file over the network. I modified the suggested code for basic authentication and kept it as follows :
WRequest = (HttpWebRequest)HttpWebRequest.Create(URL);
WRequest.Credentials = Credentials;
WRequest.PreAuthenticate = true;
WRequest.ContentType = "text/plain";
WRequest.Method = "POST";
WRequest.AllowWriteStreamBuffering = false;
WRequest.Timeout = 10000;
FileStream ReadIn = new FileStream(filename, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read);
ReadIn.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);
WRequest.ContentLength = ReadIn.Length;
Byte[] FileData = new Byte[ReadIn.Length];
int DataRead = 0;
Stream tempStream = WRequest.GetRequestStream();
do
{
DataRead = ReadIn.Read(FileData, 0, 2048);
if (DataRead > 0)
{
tempStream.Write(FileData, 0, DataRead);
Array.Clear(FileData, 0, 2048);
}
} while (DataRead > 0);
// The response
WResponse = (HttpWebResponse)WRequest.GetResponse();
However, now it gives me System.Net.ProtocolViolationException error : "You must write ContentLength bytes to the request stream before calling [Begin]GetResponse". I checked HttpWebRequest.BeginGetRequestResponse ... and found from debugging that the contentlength for WRequest is not -1. What else could be going wrong ? How should I get the response ?
Update :
The code which worked for small files is as followed :
WebRequest request = WebRequest.Create(url);
request.Method = "POST";
request.Credentials = Credentials;
using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(filename))
{
postData = reader.ReadToEnd();
}
byte[] byteArray = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(postData);
request.ContentType = "text/plain";
request.ContentLength = byteArray.Length;
Stream dataStream = request.GetRequestStream();
dataStream.Write(byteArray, 0, byteArray.Length);
dataStream.Close();
// The response
WebResponse response = request.GetResponse();
Console.WriteLine(((HttpWebResponse)response).StatusDescription);
dataStream = response.GetResponseStream();
using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(dataStream))
{
responseFromServer = reader.ReadToEnd();
}
dataStream.Close();
response.Close();

The article you referenced says
If the Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) Web server is configured to use Basic authentication, and you must set the HttpWebRequest.AllowWriteStreamBuffering property to false, you must send a HEAD request to pre-authenticate the connection before you send the POST or PUT request.
EDIT - now with more clarification!
To restate the article, if you want to send a large file to a destination which requires basic authentication, you'll need to issue two separate requests. The key here is that you are setting PreAuthenticate = true. Read the statement literally -- by setting the property to true, you are saying that you will authenticate any requests that you make before you actually attempt them! The framework doesn't know how you want to accomplish this pre-authentication, so you need to perform that action yourself, by sending a HEAD request to the destination. Think of the HEAD HTTP method as being a prologue to the actual request - it describes (or requests information about) a particular resource.
So the process goes like this:
Make a HEAD request to http://someurl/aresource containing the credentials you want to use when making future requests from this client to that server for the listed resource
The server will respond (ideally) with "OK - you may proceed. You're authenticated"
The server immediately regrets its' decision to allow the operation as it finds itself saving a very large file :-)
I don't see you making that HEAD request anywhere in the code you posted - if it's not already there, add this at the beginning of your code (snipped from the sample article ref in OP):
//preAuth the request
// You can add logic so that you only pre-authenticate the very first request.
// You should not have to pre-authenticate each request.
WRequest = (HttpWebRequest)HttpWebRequest.Create(URL);
// Set the username and the password.
WRequest.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(user, password);
WRequest.PreAuthenticate = true;
WRequest.UserAgent = "Upload Test";
WRequest.Method = "HEAD";
WRequest.Timeout = 10000;
WResponse = (HttpWebResponse)WRequest.GetResponse();
WResponse.Close();
// Make the real request.

Error when sending HttpWebRequest from .NET to php site

Despite trying lots of things (see below), I can't get rid of the "Bytes to be written to the stream exceed the Content-Length bytes size specified." error that's thrown in
writer.Close();
This is the code that tries to post data from an ASP.NET to a php site. The script works fine as long as there are no special characters in the code - note the German Umlaut in 'Wörld'.
Uri uri = new Uri("http://mydomain/test.php");
string data = #"data=Hello Wörld";
HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)HttpWebRequest.Create(uri);
request.Method = WebRequestMethods.Http.Post;
request.ContentLength = data.Length;
request.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";
StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(request.GetRequestStream());
writer.Write(data);
writer.Close();
HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream());
string tmp = reader.ReadToEnd();
response.Close();
Response.Write(tmp);
I have tried different variations using UTF-8 encodings, like:
request.ContentLength = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetByteCount(data);
and/or
StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(request.GetRequestStream(), Encoding.UTF8);
I have also tried to convert the data to UTF-8 before sending it (somewhat ugly):
data = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetString(System.Text.Encoding.Convert(System.Text.Encoding.UTF8, System.Text.Encoding.UTF8, System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(data)));
Yet the error remains. My feeling is that I just don't get the UTF-8 handling right. Any help is greatly appreciated, also any hint where I can find a perfectly working script that posts to php from ASP.NET (server side).

use
byte[] bdata = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(data);
and
request.ContentLength = bdata.Length;
and
Stream writer = request.GetRequestStream();
writer.Write(bdata, 0, bdata.Length);
writer.Close();