HttpWebClient

The HttpWebClient is a C# HTTP Web Client implementation designed to drop-in replace Mono's HttpWebRequest and HttpWebResponse implementation. The main goals were:

• Approximate the Mono/.NET implementation without the unneeded Windows parts
• Keep things simple
• Be fast

HttpWebClient runs under Mono 3.x and .NET 4.5 and above.

Building

Build from MonoDevelop or from the command line:

xbuild HttpWebClient.sln

To build in release mode execute xbuild with the additional parameter: /p:configuration=Release.

Example

The following example code requests the RFC2616 text file from the IETF web site. The example is very similar to .NETs HttpWebRequest/HttpWebResponse implementation style.

public static void Main(string[] args)
{
    try
    {
        var request = new HttpWebClientRequest(@"http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt");

        using (var response = request.GetResponse())
        {
            if (response.StatusCode == (int)HttpWebClientStatusCode.OK)
            {
                using (var responseStream = response.GetResponseStream())
                {
                    using (var stream = new StreamReader(responseStream))
                    {
                        var body = stream.ReadToEnd();
                        Console.WriteLine(body);
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
    catch (HttpWebClientException ex)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("ERROR: " + ex.Message);
    }
}

Differences and Missing Parts

• Exceptions are derived from HttpWebClientException/ApplicationException and not from the System.Net exception types
• There is currently no support for SSL
• HttpWebRequest.GetResponse() takes an optional bool parameter which disables exception throws on HTTP 'error' codes. So on 404 or 500 you can get the response and handle it without needing exception plumbing.