C# – Inherited Web API API Controller

There are several ways to perform HTTP GET and POST requests:

Method A: HttpClient (Preferred)

Available in: .NET Framework 4.5+, .NET Standard 1.1+, .NET Core 1.0+ .

It is currently the preferred approach, and is asynchronous and high performance. Use the built-in version in most cases, but for very old platforms there is a NuGet package.

using System.Net.Http;

Setup

It is recommended to instantiate one HttpClient for your application's lifetime and share it unless you have a specific reason not to.

private static readonly HttpClient client = new HttpClient();

See HttpClientFactory for a dependency injection solution.

• POST

  var values = new Dictionary<string, string>
  {
      { "thing1", "hello" },
      { "thing2", "world" }
  };
  
  var content = new FormUrlEncodedContent(values);
  
  var response = await client.PostAsync("http://www.example.com/recepticle.aspx", content);
  
  var responseString = await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();
  

• GET

  var responseString = await client.GetStringAsync("http://www.example.com/recepticle.aspx");
  

Method B: Third-Party Libraries

RestSharp

• POST

   var client = new RestClient("http://example.com");
   // client.Authenticator = new HttpBasicAuthenticator(username, password);
   var request = new RestRequest("resource/{id}");
   request.AddParameter("thing1", "Hello");
   request.AddParameter("thing2", "world");
   request.AddHeader("header", "value");
   request.AddFile("file", path);
   var response = client.Post(request);
   var content = response.Content; // Raw content as string
   var response2 = client.Post<Person>(request);
   var name = response2.Data.Name;
  

Flurl.Http

It is a newer library sporting a fluent API, testing helpers, uses HttpClient under the hood, and is portable. It is available via NuGet.

    using Flurl.Http;

• POST

  var responseString = await "http://www.example.com/recepticle.aspx"
      .PostUrlEncodedAsync(new { thing1 = "hello", thing2 = "world" })
      .ReceiveString();
  

• GET

  var responseString = await "http://www.example.com/recepticle.aspx"
      .GetStringAsync();
  

Method C: HttpWebRequest (not recommended for new work)

Available in: .NET Framework 1.1+, .NET Standard 2.0+, .NET Core 1.0+. In .NET Core, it is mostly for compatibility -- it wraps HttpClient, is less performant, and won't get new features.

using System.Net;
using System.Text;  // For class Encoding
using System.IO;    // For StreamReader

• POST

  var request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("http://www.example.com/recepticle.aspx");
  
  var postData = "thing1=" + Uri.EscapeDataString("hello");
      postData += "&thing2=" + Uri.EscapeDataString("world");
  var data = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(postData);
  
  request.Method = "POST";
  request.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";
  request.ContentLength = data.Length;
  
  using (var stream = request.GetRequestStream())
  {
      stream.Write(data, 0, data.Length);
  }
  
  var response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
  
  var responseString = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream()).ReadToEnd();
  

• GET

  var request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("http://www.example.com/recepticle.aspx");
  
  var response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
  
  var responseString = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream()).ReadToEnd();
  

Method D: WebClient (Not recommended for new work)

This is a wrapper around HttpWebRequest. Compare with HttpClient.

Available in: .NET Framework 1.1+, NET Standard 2.0+, .NET Core 2.0+

using System.Net;
using System.Collections.Specialized;

• POST

  using (var client = new WebClient())
  {
      var values = new NameValueCollection();
      values["thing1"] = "hello";
      values["thing2"] = "world";
  
      var response = client.UploadValues("http://www.example.com/recepticle.aspx", values);
  
      var responseString = Encoding.Default.GetString(response);
  }
  

• GET

  using (var client = new WebClient())
  {
      var responseString = client.DownloadString("http://www.example.com/recepticle.aspx");
  }
  

Try using a simple HttpResponseMessage with its Content property set to a StreamContent:

// using System.IO;
// using System.Net.Http;
// using System.Net.Http.Headers;

public HttpResponseMessage Post(string version, string environment,
    string filetype)
{
    var path = @"C:\Temp\test.exe";
    HttpResponseMessage result = new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.OK);
    var stream = new FileStream(path, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read);
    result.Content = new StreamContent(stream);
    result.Content.Headers.ContentType = 
        new MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/octet-stream");
    return result;
}

A few things to note about the stream used:

• You must not call stream.Dispose(), since Web API still needs to be able to access it when it processes the controller method's result to send data back to the client. Therefore, do not use a using (var stream = …) block. Web API will dispose the stream for you.

• Make sure that the stream has its current position set to 0 (i.e. the beginning of the stream's data). In the above example, this is a given since you've only just opened the file. However, in other scenarios (such as when you first write some binary data to a MemoryStream), make sure to stream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin); or set stream.Position = 0;

• With file streams, explicitly specifying FileAccess.Read permission can help prevent access rights issues on web servers; IIS application pool accounts are often given only read / list / execute access rights to the wwwroot.