C# Restful client - connection timeout

Question

I'm using WinForms and accessing my Restful webservice. For some reason the code after a while breaks, by giving the timeout error while connecting to the server.

The problem might also be due to my code design. Here's my Restful client class

public class Restful
{
    public string auth = "Basic " + Convert.ToBase64String(Encoding.Default.GetBytes("MyUserName:MyPassword"));
    
    public string POST(string parameters)
    {
         var request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("http://myserverdomain.com/api/webservice/someMethod");

        byte[] byteArray = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(parameters);

        request.Method = WebRequestMethods.Http.Post;
        request.Headers["Authorization"] = this.auth;
        request.ContentLength = byteArray.Length;
        request.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";

        Stream postStream = null;

        try
        {
            // ERROR IS IN THIS LINE
            postStream = request.GetRequestStream();
        }
        catch (WebException ex)
        {
            // I'm kind of creating an hack here..which isn't good..
            if (ex.Status.ToString() == "ConnectFailure")
            {
                System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(1000);
                this.POST(parameters);
            }
        }

        if (postStream == null)
            return string.Empty;

        postStream.Write(byteArray, 0, byteArray.Length);
        postStream.Close();

        using (var response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse())
        {
            var responseValue = string.Empty;

            if (response.StatusCode != HttpStatusCode.OK)
                return responseValue;

            using (var responseStream = response.GetResponseStream())
                if (responseStream != null)
                    using (var reader = new StreamReader(responseStream))
                        responseValue = reader.ReadToEnd();

            return responseValue;
        }
    }
}

I'm receiving the error (after a few successfully send items):

Unable to connect to remote server

A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond MyServerIpAddress

Sometimes I send thousands of items to the server, sometimes I only send 2 or 4. So I call this POST function within a loop.

try
{
    foreach (app.views.Documents doc in DocumentsView)
    {
        var parameters = "key=" + doc.key;
            parameters += "&param1=" + doc.param1 + "&param2=" + doc.param2;
        
        /*
         * Validates the response of Restful service.
         * The response is always in JSON format.
         */
        if (response(Restful.POST(parameters)) == false)
        {
            MessageBox.Show("Error while sending the ID: " + doc.id.ToString());
            break;
        };
    }
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
    MessageBox.Show("Error while sending documents: " + ex.Message);
}

I would also suggest to give some thought as to why your service is taking so long to respond. Increasing time out is not a resolution. The problem could be some place else which we might often oversee. — Emmanuel Ponnudurai, Mar 14 '16 at 17:36

score 5 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 10:28

5

You can change the default timeout of your HttpWebRequest to be some thing larger than the default, for example:

request.Timeout = 120000;

I think the default is 100 seconds.

You can also check this adjusting-httpwebrequest-connection-timeout-in-c-sharp

edited May 23 '17 at 10:28

Community

1
1

answered Mar 14 '16 at 15:56

Marzouk

2,650
3
25
56

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 14 '16 at 16:03

0

taking the failure at face value, it says that the remote machine didnt respond. Most likely causes

wrong name or ip address
windows firewall is on on the remote machine

answered Mar 14 '16 at 16:03

pm100

48,078
23
82
145

C# Restful client - connection timeout

2 Answers2