How can I get a reference to an HttpResponse in ASP.NET MVC?

Question

I\'m calling a third-party library that takes a System.Web.HttpResponse. I see I have a HttpResponseBase, but not HttpResponse like in web

Answer 1

No, but your HttpResponseBase is probably an HttpResponseWrapper which contains an HttpResponse inside of it. All the HttpResponse methods are accessible from the HttpResponseBase.

If you want access to the HttpResponse, then you could add a reference to it in HttpContext.Items in your IHttpHandler or somewhere earlier in the ASP.NET lifecycle. The BeginRequest event would be a good point to do this.

Your HttpContext.Items references the same dictionary that HttpContextBase.Items references, so you will have access to all those items in MVC3

To clarify,

It is an HttpResponseWrapper, but there is no public accessor for the HttpResponse. So, there is not a directly accessible reference. To make a directly accessible reference before the framework decides to start giving you the wrapper instead of the underlying reference, create an event handler for HttpApplication.BeginRequest event. Your handler will have a reference to the HttpContext object. Set HttpContext.Items["HttpRequest"] = HttpContext.Request. Then in your controller you will be able to access the HttpRequest reference by RequestContext.HttpContext.Items["HttpRequest"].