C# – Turn off request validation programmatically

If you are using IIS for hosting your application, then the default upload file size is 4MB. To increase it, please use this below section in your web.config -

<configuration>
    <system.web>
        <httpRuntime maxRequestLength="1048576" />
    </system.web>
</configuration>

For IIS7 and above, you also need to add the lines below:

 <system.webServer>
   <security>
      <requestFiltering>
         <requestLimits maxAllowedContentLength="1073741824" />
      </requestFiltering>
   </security>
 </system.webServer>

Note:

• maxRequestLength is measured in kilobytes
• maxAllowedContentLength is measured in bytes

which is why the values differ in this config example. (Both are equivalent to 1 GB.)

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");
  }