C# – What difference is there between WebClient and HTTPWebRequest classes in .NET

chttpwebrequestnetwebclient

What difference is there between the WebClient and the HttpWebRequest classes in .NET? They both do very similar things. In fact, why weren't they merged into one class (too many methods/variables etc may be one reason but there are other classes in .NET which breaks that rule).

Thanks.

Best Answer

WebClient is a higher-level abstraction built on top of HttpWebRequest to simplify the most common tasks. For instance, if you want to get the content out of an HttpWebResponse, you have to read from the response stream:

var http = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("http://example.com");
var response = http.GetResponse();

var stream = response.GetResponseStream();
var sr = new StreamReader(stream);
var content = sr.ReadToEnd();

With WebClient, you just do DownloadString:

var client = new WebClient();
var content = client.DownloadString("http://example.com");

Note: I left out the using statements from both examples for brevity. You should definitely take care to dispose your web request objects properly.

In general, WebClient is good for quick and dirty simple requests and HttpWebRequest is good for when you need more control over the entire request.

This is the style that Microsoft tends to use in their examples.

It appears that the guidance in this area may have changed, as StyleCop now enforces the use of the C# specific aliases.

C# – the difference between const and readonly in C#

Apart from the apparent difference of

having to declare the value at the time of a definition for a const VS readonly values can be computed dynamically but need to be assigned before the constructor exits.. after that it is frozen.
const's are implicitly static. You use a ClassName.ConstantName notation to access them.

There is a subtle difference. Consider a class defined in AssemblyA.

public class Const_V_Readonly
{
  public const int I_CONST_VALUE = 2;
  public readonly int I_RO_VALUE;
  public Const_V_Readonly()
  {
     I_RO_VALUE = 3;
  }
}

AssemblyB references AssemblyA and uses these values in code. When this is compiled:

in the case of the const value, it is like a find-replace. The value 2 is 'baked into' the AssemblyB's IL. This means that if tomorrow I update I_CONST_VALUE to 20, AssemblyB would still have 2 till I recompile it.
in the case of the readonly value, it is like a ref to a memory location. The value is not baked into AssemblyB's IL. This means that if the memory location is updated, AssemblyB gets the new value without recompilation. So if I_RO_VALUE is updated to 30, you only need to build AssemblyA and all clients do not need to be recompiled.

So if you are confident that the value of the constant won't change, use a const.

public const int CM_IN_A_METER = 100;

But if you have a constant that may change (e.g. w.r.t. precision).. or when in doubt, use a readonly.

public readonly float PI = 3.14;

Update: Aku needs to get a mention because he pointed this out first. Also I need to plug where I learned this: Effective C# - Bill Wagner

Best Answer

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This is the style that Microsoft tends to use in their examples.

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