Read the HTTP POST request of HttpWebRequest

Question

I need to create Http POST requests and maybe a few GET requests as strings for some tests I am writing. Currently, my tests build them using a StringBuilder and hardcoded POST requests pulled out from fiddler kinda like this:

var builder = new StringBuilder();
builder.Append("POST https://some.web.pg HTTP/1.1\r\n");
builder.Append("Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\r\n");
builder.Append("Referer: https://some.referer.com\r\n");
builder.Append("Accept-Language: en-us\r\n");
builder.Append("Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate\r\n");
builder.Append("User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/5.0)\r\n");
builder.Append("Host: login.yahoo.com\r\n");
//    ... other header info
builder.Append("\r\n");
builder.Append("post body......\r\n");
var postData = builder.ToString();

This is quickly making my tests messy and would prefer to have a cleaner way to build these POST requests. I've been looking into HttpWebRequest class hoping that maybe it can create these for me. I figured that behind the sences it must have some way to construct this exact request I am trying to creating in some form or another. But alas, the GetRequestStream is a writable only stream.

Is there a way to read the request stream HttpWebRequest will generate (and then change it to a string)? Or even any ideas on how to generate these POST requests would do.

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:02

here an msdn sample to make a Get request:

using System;

using System.Net; using System.IO;

namespace MakeAGETRequest_charp { /// /// Summary description for Class1. /// class Class1 { static void Main(string[] args) { string sURL; sURL = "http://www.microsoft.com";

        WebRequest wrGETURL;
        wrGETURL = WebRequest.Create(sURL);

        WebProxy myProxy = new WebProxy("myproxy",80);
        myProxy.BypassProxyOnLocal = true;

        wrGETURL.Proxy = WebProxy.GetDefaultProxy();

        Stream objStream;
        objStream = wrGETURL.GetResponse().GetResponseStream();

        StreamReader objReader = new StreamReader(objStream);

        string sLine = "";
        int i = 0;

        while (sLine!=null)
        {
            i++;
            sLine = objReader.ReadLine();
            if (sLine!=null)
                Console.WriteLine("{0}:{1}",i,sLine);
        }
        Console.ReadLine();
    }
}

} and here an for post request (from HTTP request with post)

    HttpWebRequest httpWReq =
    (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("http:\\domain.com\page.asp");

ASCIIEncoding encoding = new ASCIIEncoding();
string postData = "username=user";
postData += "&password=pass";
byte[] data = encoding.GetBytes(postData);

httpWReq.Method = "POST";
httpWReq.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";
httpWReq.ContentLength = data.Length;

using (Stream newStream = httpWReq.GetRequestStream())
{
    newStream.Write(data,0,data.Length);
}

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:02

0

I advise you to use mocking because it is a best practice on unit test: see this answer on stack Unit testing HTTP requests in c#

edited May 23 '17 at 12:02

Community

1
1

answered Aug 04 '12 at 01:56

Hassan Boutougha

3,871
1
17
17

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 04 '12 at 05:32

    HttpWebRequest req = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(yoururllink);
    var c = HttpContext.Current;

    //Set values for the request back
    req.Method = "POST";
    req.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";
    byte[] param = Request.BinaryRead(HttpContext.Current.Request.ContentLength);
    string strRequest = Encoding.ASCII.GetString(param);
    string strResponse_copy = strRequest;  //Save a copy of the initial info sent from your url link
    strRequest += "&cmd=_notify-validate";
    req.ContentLength = strRequest.Length;

    //for proxy
    //WebProxy proxy = new WebProxy(new Uri("http://url:port#"));
    //req.Proxy = proxy;

    //Send the request to PayPal and get the response
    StreamWriter streamOut = new StreamWriter(req.GetRequestStream(), System.Text.Encoding.ASCII);
    streamOut.Write(strRequest);
    streamOut.Close();
    StreamReader streamIn = new StreamReader(req.GetResponse().GetResponseStream());
    string strResponse = streamIn.ReadToEnd();
    streamIn.Close();

Read the HTTP POST request of HttpWebRequest

3 Answers3