Build query string for System.Net.HttpClient get

Question

If I wish to submit a http get request using System.Net.HttpClient there seems to be no api to add parameters, is this correct?

Is there any simple api available to build the query string that doesn't involve building a name value collection and url encoding those and then finally concatenating them? I was hoping to use something like RestSharp's api (i.e AddParameter(..))

Answer 1

If I wish to submit a http get request using System.Net.HttpClient there seems to be no api to add parameters, is this correct?

Yes.

Is there any simple api available to build the query string that doesn't involve building a name value collection and url encoding those and then finally concatenating them?

Sure:

var query = HttpUtility.ParseQueryString(string.Empty);
query["foo"] = "bar<>&-baz";
query["bar"] = "bazinga";
string queryString = query.ToString();

will give you the expected result:

foo=bar%3c%3e%26-baz&bar=bazinga

You might also find the UriBuilder class useful:

var builder = new UriBuilder("http://example.com");
builder.Port = -1;
var query = HttpUtility.ParseQueryString(builder.Query);
query["foo"] = "bar<>&-baz";
query["bar"] = "bazinga";
builder.Query = query.ToString();
string url = builder.ToString();

will give you the expected result:

http://example.com/?foo=bar%3c%3e%26-baz&bar=bazinga

that you could more than safely feed to your HttpClient.GetAsync method.

Answer 2

For those who do not want to include System.Web in projects that don't already use it, you can use FormUrlEncodedContent from System.Net.Http and do something like the following:

keyvaluepair version

string query;
using(var content = new FormUrlEncodedContent(new KeyValuePair<string, string>[]{
    new KeyValuePair<string, string>("ham", "Glazed?"),
    new KeyValuePair<string, string>("x-men", "Wolverine + Logan"),
    new KeyValuePair<string, string>("Time", DateTime.UtcNow.ToString()),
})) {
    query = content.ReadAsStringAsync().Result;
}

dictionary version

string query;
using(var content = new FormUrlEncodedContent(new Dictionary<string, string>()
{
    { "ham", "Glaced?"},
    { "x-men", "Wolverine + Logan"},
    { "Time", DateTime.UtcNow.ToString() },
})) {
    query = content.ReadAsStringAsync().Result;
}

Answer 3

In a ASP.NET Core project you can use the QueryHelpers class, available in the Microsoft.AspNetCore.WebUtilities namespace for ASP.NET Core, or the .NET Standard 2.0 NuGet package for other consumers:

// using Microsoft.AspNetCore.WebUtilities;
var query = new Dictionary<string, string>
{
    ["foo"] = "bar",
    ["foo2"] = "bar2",
    // ...
};

var response = await client.GetAsync(QueryHelpers.AddQueryString("/api/", query));

Answer 4

TL;DR: do not use accepted version as It's completely broken in relation to handling unicode characters, and never use internal API

I've actually found weird double encoding issue with the accepted solution:

So, If you're dealing with characters which need to be encoded, accepted solution leads to double encoding:

• query parameters are auto encoded by using NameValueCollection indexer (and this uses UrlEncodeUnicode, not regular expected UrlEncode(!))
• Then, when you call uriBuilder.Uri it creates new Uri using constructor which does encoding one more time (normal url encoding)
• That cannot be avoided by doing uriBuilder.ToString() (even though this returns correct Uri which IMO is at least inconsistency, maybe a bug, but that's another question) and then using HttpClient method accepting string - client still creates Uri out of your passed string like this: new Uri(uri, UriKind.RelativeOrAbsolute)

Small, but full repro:

var builder = new UriBuilder
{
    Scheme = Uri.UriSchemeHttps,
    Port = -1,
    Host = "127.0.0.1",
    Path = "app"
};

NameValueCollection query = HttpUtility.ParseQueryString(builder.Query);

query["cyrillic"] = "кирилиця";

builder.Query = query.ToString();
Console.WriteLine(builder.Query); //query with cyrillic stuff UrlEncodedUnicode, and that's not what you want

var uri = builder.Uri; // creates new Uri using constructor which does encode and messes cyrillic parameter even more
Console.WriteLine(uri);

// this is still wrong:
var stringUri = builder.ToString(); // returns more 'correct' (still `UrlEncodedUnicode`, but at least once, not twice)
new HttpClient().GetStringAsync(stringUri); // this creates Uri object out of 'stringUri' so we still end up sending double encoded cyrillic text to server. Ouch!

Output:

?cyrillic=%u043a%u0438%u0440%u0438%u043b%u0438%u0446%u044f

https://127.0.0.1/app?cyrillic=%25u043a%25u0438%25u0440%25u0438%25u043b%25u0438%25u0446%25u044f

As you may see, no matter if you do uribuilder.ToString() + httpClient.GetStringAsync(string) or uriBuilder.Uri + httpClient.GetStringAsync(Uri) you end up sending double encoded parameter

Fixed example could be:

var uri = new Uri(builder.ToString(), dontEscape: true);
new HttpClient().GetStringAsync(uri);

But this uses obsolete Uri constructor

P.S on my latest .NET on Windows Server, Uri constructor with bool doc comment says "obsolete, dontEscape is always false", but actually works as expected (skips escaping)

So It looks like another bug...

And even this is plain wrong - it send UrlEncodedUnicode to server, not just UrlEncoded what server expects

Update: one more thing is, NameValueCollection actually does UrlEncodeUnicode, which is not supposed to be used anymore and is incompatible with regular url.encode/decode (see NameValueCollection to URL Query?).

So the bottom line is: never use this hack with NameValueCollection query = HttpUtility.ParseQueryString(builder.Query); as it will mess your unicode query parameters. Just build query manually and assign it to UriBuilder.Query which will do necessary encoding and then get Uri using UriBuilder.Uri.

Prime example of hurting yourself by using code which is not supposed to be used like this

Answer 5

You might want to check out Flurl [disclosure: I'm the author], a fluent URL builder with optional companion lib that extends it into a full-blown REST client.

var result = await "https://api.com"
    // basic URL building:
    .AppendPathSegment("endpoint")
    .SetQueryParams(new {
        api_key = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["SomeApiKey"],
        max_results = 20,
        q = "Don't worry, I'll get encoded!"
    })
    .SetQueryParams(myDictionary)
    .SetQueryParam("q", "overwrite q!")

    // extensions provided by Flurl.Http:
    .WithOAuthBearerToken("token")
    .GetJsonAsync<TResult>();

Check out the docs for more details. The full package is available on NuGet:

PM> Install-Package Flurl.Http

or just the stand-alone URL builder:

PM> Install-Package Flurl

Answer 6

Along the same lines as Rostov's post, if you do not want to include a reference to System.Web in your project, you can use FormDataCollection from System.Net.Http.Formatting and do something like the following:

Using System.Net.Http.Formatting.FormDataCollection

var parameters = new Dictionary<string, string>()
{
    { "ham", "Glaced?" },
    { "x-men", "Wolverine + Logan" },
    { "Time", DateTime.UtcNow.ToString() },
}; 
var query = new FormDataCollection(parameters).ReadAsNameValueCollection().ToString();

Answer 7

Since I have to reuse this few time, I came up with this class that simply help to abstract how the query string is composed.

public class UriBuilderExt
{
    private NameValueCollection collection;
    private UriBuilder builder;

    public UriBuilderExt(string uri)
    {
        builder = new UriBuilder(uri);
        collection = System.Web.HttpUtility.ParseQueryString(string.Empty);
    }

    public void AddParameter(string key, string value) {
        collection.Add(key, value);
    }

    public Uri Uri{
        get
        {
            builder.Query = collection.ToString();
            return builder.Uri;
        }
    }

}

The use will be simplify to something like this:

var builder = new UriBuilderExt("http://example.com/");
builder.AddParameter("foo", "bar<>&-baz");
builder.AddParameter("bar", "second");
var uri = builder.Uri;

that will return the uri: http://example.com/?foo=bar%3c%3e%26-baz&bar=second

Answer 8

Good part of accepted answer, modified to use UriBuilder.Uri.ParseQueryString() instead of HttpUtility.ParseQueryString():

var builder = new UriBuilder("http://example.com");
var query = builder.Uri.ParseQueryString();
query["foo"] = "bar<>&-baz";
query["bar"] = "bazinga";
builder.Query = query.ToString();
string url = builder.ToString();

Answer 9

Darin offered an interesting and clever solution, and here is something that may be another option:

public class ParameterCollection
{
    private Dictionary<string, string> _parms = new Dictionary<string, string>();

    public void Add(string key, string val)
    {
        if (_parms.ContainsKey(key))
        {
            throw new InvalidOperationException(string.Format("The key {0} already exists.", key));
        }
        _parms.Add(key, val);
    }

    public override string ToString()
    {
        var server = HttpContext.Current.Server;
        var sb = new StringBuilder();
        foreach (var kvp in _parms)
        {
            if (sb.Length > 0) { sb.Append("&"); }
            sb.AppendFormat("{0}={1}",
                server.UrlEncode(kvp.Key),
                server.UrlEncode(kvp.Value));
        }
        return sb.ToString();
    }
}

and so when using it, you might do this:

var parms = new ParameterCollection();
parms.Add("key", "value");

var url = ...
url += "?" + parms;

Answer 10

The RFC 6570 URI Template library I'm developing is capable of performing this operation. All encoding is handled for you in accordance with that RFC. At the time of this writing, a beta release is available and the only reason it's not considered a stable 1.0 release is the documentation doesn't fully meet my expectations (see issues #17, #18, #32, #43).

You could either build a query string alone:

UriTemplate template = new UriTemplate("{?params*}");
var parameters = new Dictionary<string, string>
  {
    { "param1", "value1" },
    { "param2", "value2" },
  };
Uri relativeUri = template.BindByName(parameters);

Or you could build a complete URI:

UriTemplate template = new UriTemplate("path/to/item{?params*}");
var parameters = new Dictionary<string, string>
  {
    { "param1", "value1" },
    { "param2", "value2" },
  };
Uri baseAddress = new Uri("http://www.example.com");
Uri relativeUri = template.BindByName(baseAddress, parameters);

Answer 11

Or simply using my Uri extension

Code

public static Uri AttachParameters(this Uri uri, NameValueCollection parameters)
{
    var stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();
    string str = "?";
    for (int index = 0; index < parameters.Count; ++index)
    {
        stringBuilder.Append(str + parameters.AllKeys[index] + "=" + parameters[index]);
        str = "&";
    }
    return new Uri(uri + stringBuilder.ToString());
}

Usage

Uri uri = new Uri("http://www.example.com/index.php").AttachParameters(new NameValueCollection
                                                                           {
                                                                               {"Bill", "Gates"},
                                                                               {"Steve", "Jobs"}
                                                                           });

Result

http://www.example.com/index.php?Bill=Gates&Steve=Jobs

Answer 12

To avoid double encoding issue described in taras.roshko's answer and to keep possibility to easily work with query parameters, you can use uriBuilder.Uri.ParseQueryString() instead of HttpUtility.ParseQueryString().

Answer 13

My answer doesn't globally differ from the accepted/other answers. I just tried to create an extension method for the Uri type, which takes variable number of parameters.

public static class UriExtensions
{
    public static Uri AddParameter(this Uri url, params (string Name, string Value)[] @params)
    {
        if (!@params.Any())
        {
            return url;
        }

        UriBuilder uriBuilder = new(url);

        NameValueCollection query = HttpUtility.ParseQueryString(uriBuilder.Query);

        foreach (var param in @params)
        {
            query[param.Name] = param.Value.Trim();
        }

        uriBuilder.Query = query.ToString();

        return uriBuilder.Uri;
    }
}

Usage example:

var uri = new Uri("http://someuri.com")
    .AddParameter(
       ("p1.name", "p1.value"),
       ("p2.name", "p2.value"),
       ("p3.name", "p3.value"));

Answer 14

Thanks to "Darin Dimitrov", This is the extension methods.

 public static partial class Ext
{
    public static Uri GetUriWithparameters(this Uri uri,Dictionary<string,string> queryParams = null,int port = -1)
    {
        var builder = new UriBuilder(uri);
        builder.Port = port;
        if(null != queryParams && 0 < queryParams.Count)
        {
            var query = HttpUtility.ParseQueryString(builder.Query);
            foreach(var item in queryParams)
            {
                query[item.Key] = item.Value;
            }
            builder.Query = query.ToString();
        }
        return builder.Uri;
    }

    public static string GetUriWithparameters(string uri,Dictionary<string,string> queryParams = null,int port = -1)
    {
        var builder = new UriBuilder(uri);
        builder.Port = port;
        if(null != queryParams && 0 < queryParams.Count)
        {
            var query = HttpUtility.ParseQueryString(builder.Query);
            foreach(var item in queryParams)
            {
                query[item.Key] = item.Value;
            }
            builder.Query = query.ToString();
        }
        return builder.Uri.ToString();
    }
}

Answer 15

HttpClient client = new HttpClient();
var uri = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("URL of Api");
                
var requesturi = QueryHelpers.AddQueryString(uri, "parameter_name",parameter_value);
client.BaseAddress = new Uri(requesturi);

And then you can add request headers also eg:

client.DefaultRequestHeaders.Accept.Add(new MediaTypeWithQualityHeaderValue("application/json"));
client.DefaultRequestHeaders.Add("x-api-key", secretValue);

response syntax eg:

HttpResponseMessage response = client.GetAsync(requesturi).Result;

Hope it will work for you.

Answer 16

A better method is to use an extension method for HttpClient that takes a URL and an object containing the query string parameters, and automatically generates the complete URL with the parameters included

public static class HttpClientExtensions
{
    public static async Task<HttpResponseMessage> GetAsyncWithQueryString<T>(this HttpClient httpClient, string url, T queryObject)
    {
        UriBuilder uriBuilder = new UriBuilder(url);
        NameValueCollection query = HttpUtility.ParseQueryString(uriBuilder.Query);

        PropertyInfo[] properties = typeof(T).GetProperties(BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Instance);
        foreach (PropertyInfo property in properties)
        {
            string name = property.Name;
            string value = Convert.ToString(property.GetValue(queryObject, null));
            if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(value))
            {
                query[name] = HttpUtility.UrlEncode(value);
            }
        }

        uriBuilder.Query = query.ToString();

        // Remove unnecessary parts of the URL such as protocol and port
        string finalUrl = uriBuilder.ToString().Replace("http://", "").Replace(":80", "");

        return await httpClient.GetAsync(finalUrl);
    }
}

To use this extension method, simply call it on an instance of HttpClient, passing in the base URL and an object containing the query string parameters

MyQueryObject queryObject = new MyQueryObject { Param1 = "value1", Param2 = "value2" };

HttpResponseMessage response = await _httpClient.GetAsyncWithQueryString("https://example.com/api/carts", queryObject);

Answer 17

I couldn't find a better solution than creating a extension method to convert a Dictionary to QueryStringFormat. The solution proposed by Waleed A.K. is good as well.

Follow my solution:

Create the extension method:

public static class DictionaryExt
{
    public static string ToQueryString<TKey, TValue>(this Dictionary<TKey, TValue> dictionary)
    {
        return ToQueryString<TKey, TValue>(dictionary, "?");
    }

    public static string ToQueryString<TKey, TValue>(this Dictionary<TKey, TValue> dictionary, string startupDelimiter)
    {
        string result = string.Empty;
        foreach (var item in dictionary)
        {
            if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(result))
                result += startupDelimiter; // "?";
            else
                result += "&";

            result += string.Format("{0}={1}", item.Key, item.Value);
        }
        return result;
    }
}

And them:

var param = new Dictionary<string, string>
          {
            { "param1", "value1" },
            { "param2", "value2" },
          };
param.ToQueryString(); //By default will add (?) question mark at begining
//"?param1=value1&param2=value2"
param.ToQueryString("&"); //Will add (&)
//"&param1=value1&param2=value2"
param.ToQueryString(""); //Won't add anything
//"param1=value1&param2=value2"