Uncompressing gzip response from WebClient

Question

Is there a quick way to uncompress gzip response downloaded with WebClient.DownloadString() method? Do you have any suggestions on how to handle gzip responses with WebClient?

Answer 1

The easiest way to do this is to use the built in automatic decompression with the HttpWebRequest class.

var request = (HttpWebRequest)HttpWebRequest.Create("http://stackoverflow.com");
request.Headers.Add(HttpRequestHeader.AcceptEncoding, "gzip,deflate");
request.AutomaticDecompression = DecompressionMethods.GZip | DecompressionMethods.Deflate;

To do this with a WebClient you have to make your own class derived from WebClient and override the GetWebRequest() method.

public class GZipWebClient : WebClient
{
    protected override WebRequest GetWebRequest(Uri address)
    {
        HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)base.GetWebRequest(address);
        request.AutomaticDecompression = DecompressionMethods.GZip | DecompressionMethods.Deflate;
        return request;
    }
}

Also see this SO thread: Does .NET's HttpWebResponse uncompress automatically GZiped and Deflated responses?