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How To Get Raw HttpWebRequest (c#)

We have a program that has been running for years making API calls to a web server using HttpWebRequest and yesterday it started giving an error (something like "connection forcibly closed by remote host"). The request works just fine when made through a web browser so I would love to be able to see the difference in requests. With the Firefox developer console, I can see the raw request that is made through the browser (that works) and I need to compare that to the http request that is made from our program. It seems like it should be simple (and very useful) to stream the request out to a string or a file so I can look at it (but I have not had any luck finding how to do that).
Can you tell me how to modify the below code to store the request that HttpWebRequest would send to a file or a string (instead of a network stream)?
public string Post(string uri, string data, string contentType, string method = "POST")
{
byte[] dataBytes = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(data);
HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(uri);
request.AutomaticDecompression = DecompressionMethods.GZip | DecompressionMethods.Deflate;
request.ContentLength = dataBytes.Length;
request.ContentType = contentType;
request.Method = method;
using(Stream requestBody = request.GetRequestStream())
{
requestBody.Write(dataBytes, 0, dataBytes.Length);
}
using(HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse())
using(Stream stream = response.GetResponseStream())
using(StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(stream))
{
return reader.ReadToEnd();
}
}

You can't simply log the httprequest. Because you should also consider logging all the headers.
I suggest you to use some http sniffer to log the traffic(if you can't debug or modify your code)
In addition you can catch the exceptions by using WebException and get the raw error message from the server. Maybe it'll give you idea what the problem is.
catch (WebException ex)
{
using (var stream = ex.Response.GetResponseStream())
using (var reader = new StreamReader(stream))
{
var responseString = reader.ReadToEnd();
}
}

How to Get Data From PHP C#

I have a Php Script in my Host Which has the link of my new version of my Program,How Can I Get that link From Php? I mean I wanna get that link From Php and Save it in one String.
I Often Use This Code For Doing Something like this:
webbrowser.Nagative("MyPhp Uri");
webbrowser.Document.ExecCommand("SelectAll", false, null);
webbrowser.Document.ExecCommand("Copy", false, null);
Than I Paste it in one Textbox
textbox1.Paste();
But This Way is not Complete way to get data From Php?
Can you help me?

You should use webrequest instead.
I'm not posting a complete solution because I'm pretty sure you will find one as soon as you know what to search for:
using System;
using System.Net;
//create a request object and server call
Uri requestUri = new Uri("MyPhp Uri");
HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(this.requestUri);
//set all properties you need for the request, like
request.Method = "GET";
request.BeginGetResponse(new AsyncCallback(ProcessResponse), request);
//handle response
private void ProcessResponse(IAsyncResult asynchronousResult)
{
string responseData = string.Empty;
HttpWebRequest myrequest = (HttpWebRequest)asynchronousResult.AsyncState;
using (HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)myrequest.EndGetResponse(asynchronousResult))
{
Stream responseStream = response.GetResponseStream();
using (var reader = new StreamReader(responseStream))
{
responseData = reader.ReadToEnd();
}
responseStream.Close();
}
//TODO: do something with your responseData
}
Please notice: you should definitively add some try/catch blocks.. this is only a short example to point you in the right direction.

HttpWebRequest.GetResponse() keeps getting timed out

i wrote a simple C# function to retrieve trade history from MtGox with following API call:
https://data.mtgox.com/api/1/BTCUSD/trades?since=<trade_id>
documented here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/MtGox/API/HTTP/v1#Multi_currency_trades
here's the function:
string GetTradesOnline(Int64 tid)
{
Thread.Sleep(30000);
// communicate
string url = "https://data.mtgox.com/api/1/BTCUSD/trades?since=" + tid.ToString();
HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url);
HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream());
string json = reader.ReadToEnd();
reader.Close();
reader.Dispose();
response.Close();
return json;
}
i'm starting at tid=0 (trade id) to get the data (from the very beginning). for each request, i receive a response containing 1000 trade details. i always send the trade id from the previous response for the next request. it works fine for exactly 4 requests & responses. but after that, the following line throws a "System.Net.WebException", saying that "The operation has timed out":
HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
here are the facts:
catching the exception and retying keeps causing the same exception
the default HttpWebRequest .Timeout and .ReadWriteTimeout are already high enough (over a minute)
changing HttpWebRequest.KeepAlive to false didn't solve anything either
it seems to always work in the browser even while the function is failing
it has no problems retrieveing the response from https://www.google.com
the amount of successful responses before the exceptions varies from day to day (but browser always works)
starting at the trade id that failed last time causes the exception immediately
calling this function from the main thread instead still caused the exception
running it on a different machine didn't work
running it from a different IP didn't work
increasing Thread.Sleep inbetween requests does not help
any ideas of what could be wrong?

I had the very same issue.
For me the fix was as simple as wrapping the HttpWebResponse code in using block.
using (HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse) request.GetResponse())
{
// Do your processings here....
}
Details: This issue usually happens when several requests are made to the same host, and WebResponse is not disposed properly. That is where using block will properly dispose the WebResponse object properly and thus solving the issue.

There are two kind of timeouts. Client timeout and server timeout. Have you tried doing something like this:
request.Timeout = Timeout.Infinite;
request.KeepAlive = true;
Try something like this...

I just had similar troubles calling a REST Service on a LINUX Server thru ssl. After trying many different configuration scenarios I found out that I had to send a UserAgent in the http head.
Here is my final method for calling the REST API.
private static string RunWebRequest(string url, string json)
{
HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url);
// Header
request.ContentType = "application/json";
request.Method = "POST";
request.AllowAutoRedirect = false;
request.KeepAlive = false;
request.Timeout = 30000;
request.ReadWriteTimeout = 30000;
request.UserAgent = "test.net";
request.Accept = "application/json";
request.ProtocolVersion = HttpVersion.Version11;
request.Headers.Add("Accept-Language","de_DE");
ServicePointManager.SecurityProtocol = SecurityProtocolType.Tls;
ServicePointManager.ServerCertificateValidationCallback = delegate { return true; };
byte[] bytes = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(json);
request.ContentLength = bytes.Length;
using (var writer = request.GetRequestStream())
{
writer.Write(bytes, 0, bytes.Length);
writer.Flush();
writer.Close();
}
var httpResponse = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
using (var streamReader = new StreamReader(httpResponse.GetResponseStream()))
{
var jsonReturn = streamReader.ReadToEnd();
return jsonReturn;
}
}

This is not a solution, but just an alternative:
These days i almost only use WebClient instead of HttpWebRequest. Especially WebClient.UploadString for POST and PUT and WebClient.DownloadString. These simply take and return strings. This way i don't have to deal with streams objects, except when i get a WebException. i can also set the content type with WebClient.Headers["Content-type"] if necessary. The using statement also makes life easier by calling Dispose for me.
Rarely for performance, i set System.Net.ServicePointManager.DefaultConnectionLimit high and instead use HttpClient with it's Async methods for simultaneous calls.
This is how i would do it now
string GetTradesOnline(Int64 tid)
{
using (var wc = new WebClient())
{
return wc.DownloadString("https://data.mtgox.com/api/1/BTCUSD/trades?since=" + tid.ToString());
}
}
2 more POST examples
// POST
string SubmitData(string data)
{
string response;
using (var wc = new WebClient())
{
wc.Headers["Content-type"] = "text/plain";
response = wc.UploadString("https://data.mtgox.com/api/1/BTCUSD/trades", "POST", data);
}
return response;
}
// POST: easily url encode multiple parameters
string SubmitForm(string project, string subject, string sender, string message)
{
// url encoded query
NameValueCollection query = HttpUtility.ParseQueryString(string.Empty);
query.Add("project", project);
query.Add("subject", subject);
// url encoded data
NameValueCollection data = HttpUtility.ParseQueryString(string.Empty);
data.Add("sender", sender);
data.Add("message", message);
string response;
using (var wc = new WebClient())
{
wc.Headers[HttpRequestHeader.ContentType] = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";
response = wc.UploadString( "https://data.mtgox.com/api/1/BTCUSD/trades?"+query.ToString()
, WebRequestMethods.Http.Post
, data.ToString()
);
}
return response;
}
Error handling
try
{
Console.WriteLine(GetTradesOnline(0));
string data = File.ReadAllText(#"C:\mydata.txt");
Console.WriteLine(SubmitData(data));
Console.WriteLine(SubmitForm("The Big Project", "Progress", "John Smith", "almost done"));
}
catch (WebException ex)
{
string msg;
if (ex.Response != null)
{
// read response HTTP body
using (var sr = new StreamReader(ex.Response.GetResponseStream())) msg = sr.ReadToEnd();
}
else
{
msg = ex.Message;
}
Log(msg);
}

For what it's worth, I was experiencing the same issues with timeouts every time I used it, even though calls went through to the server I was calling. The problem in my case was that I had Expect set to application/json, when that wasn't what the server was returning.

Bad Request when sending request to WCF Service?

When I use the methods below to send an xml request to an asmx service, it works fine, the only difference is is that the content type is application/soap+xml. I am getting the error: 400 Bad Request. Here is the method I am using below to send the request via HTTP Post to the WCF Service:
private static void SendRequest(string request)
{
var req = (HttpWebRequest) WebRequest.Create("http://urltoservice.svc");
req.ContentType = "text/xml";
req.Method = "POST";
using (var stm = req.GetRequestStream())
{
using (var stmw = new StreamWriter(stm))
{
stmw.Write(request);
}
}
byte[] myData;
using (var webResponse = req.GetResponse())
{
var responseStream = webResponse.GetResponseStream();
myData = ReadFully(responseStream);
}
// Do whatever you need with the response
string responseString = Encoding.ASCII.GetString(myData);
}
It seems to throw it at the line: var webResponse = req.GetResponse()

What is the type of service that you are trying to call. Is it REST WCF service or SOAP WCF Service?
You can monitor your request using Fiddler to see how your request looks when it works and when it doesnt.
Also enable Tracing on your service to know why you get a 400 Bad Request.

No idea why this works, if someone can explain it it would be great. I needed to append the method name to URI in order for it to work, for example,
http://urltoservice.svc/MethodToCall

WebRequest to connect to the Wikipedia API

This may be a pathetically simple problem, but I cannot seem to format the post webrequest/response to get data from the Wikipedia API. I have posted my code below if anyone can help me see my problem.
string pgTitle = txtPageTitle.Text;
Uri address = new Uri("http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php");
HttpWebRequest request = WebRequest.Create(address) as HttpWebRequest;
request.Method = "POST";
request.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";
string action = "query";
string query = pgTitle;
StringBuilder data = new StringBuilder();
data.Append("action=" + HttpUtility.UrlEncode(action));
data.Append("&query=" + HttpUtility.UrlEncode(query));
byte[] byteData = UTF8Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(data.ToString());
request.ContentLength = byteData.Length;
using (Stream postStream = request.GetRequestStream())
{
postStream.Write(byteData, 0, byteData.Length);
}
using (HttpWebResponse response = request.GetResponse() as HttpWebResponse)
{
// Get the response stream.
StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream());
divWikiData.InnerText = reader.ReadToEnd();
}

You might want to try a GET request first because it's a little simpler (you will only need to POST for wikipedia login). For example, try to simulate this request:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=images&titles=Main%20Page
Here's the code:
HttpWebRequest myRequest =
(HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=images&titles=Main%20Page");
using (HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)myRequest.GetResponse())
{
string ResponseText;
using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream()))
{
ResponseText = reader.ReadToEnd();
}
}
Edit: The other problem he was experiencing on the POST request was, The exception is : The remote server returned an error: (417) Expectation failed. It can be solved by setting:
System.Net.ServicePointManager.Expect100Continue = false;
(This is from: HTTP POST Returns Error: 417 "Expectation Failed.")

I'm currently in the final stages of implementing an C# MediaWiki API which allows the easy scripting of most MediaWiki viewing and editing actions.
The main API is here: http://o2platform.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/O2%20-%20All%20Active%20Projects/O2_XRules_Database/_Rules/APIs/OwaspAPI.cs and here is an example of the API in use:
var wiki = new O2MediaWikiAPI("http://www.o2platform.com/api.php");
wiki.login(userName, password);
var page = "Test"; // "Main_Page";
wiki.editPage(page,"Test content2");
var rawWikiText = wiki.raw(page);
var htmlText = wiki.html(page);
return rawWikiText.line().line() + htmlText;

You seem to be pushing the input data on HTTP POST, but it seems you should use HTTP GET.
From the MediaWiki API docs:
The API takes its input through
parameters in the query string. Every
module (and every action=query
submodule) has its own set of
parameters, which is listed in the
documentation and in action=help, and
can be retrieved through
action=paraminfo.
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Data_formats