How to make an HTTP POST web request

Question

Canonical
How can I make an HTTP request and send some data using the POST method?

Answer 1

This solution uses nothing but standard .NET calls.

Tested:

• In use in an enterprise WPF application. Uses async/await to avoid blocking the UI.
• Compatible with .NET 4.5+.
• Tested with no parameters (requires a "GET" behind the scenes).
• Tested with parameters (requires a "POST" behind the scenes).
• Tested with a standard web page such as Google.
• Tested with an internal Java-based webservice.

Reference:

// Add a Reference to the assembly System.Web

Code:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Collections.Specialized;
using System.Net;
using System.Net.Http;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using System.Web;

private async Task CallUri(string url, TimeSpan timeout)
{
    var uri = new Uri(url);
    NameValueCollection rawParameters = HttpUtility.ParseQueryString(uri.Query);
    var parameters = new Dictionary();
    foreach (string p in rawParameters.Keys)
    {
        parameters[p] = rawParameters[p];
    }

    var client = new HttpClient { Timeout = timeout };
    HttpResponseMessage response;
    if (parameters.Count == 0)
    {
        response = await client.GetAsync(url);
    }
    else
    {
        var content = new FormUrlEncodedContent(parameters);
        string urlMinusParameters = uri.OriginalString.Split('?')[0]; // Parameters always follow the '?' symbol.
        response = await client.PostAsync(urlMinusParameters, content);
    }
    var responseString = await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();

    return new WebResponse(response.StatusCode, responseString);
}

private class WebResponse
{
    public WebResponse(HttpStatusCode httpStatusCode, string response)
    {
        this.HttpStatusCode = httpStatusCode;
        this.Response = response;
    }
    public HttpStatusCode HttpStatusCode { get; }
    public string Response { get; }
}

To call with no parameters (uses a "GET" behind the scenes):

 var timeout = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(300);
 WebResponse response = await this.CallUri("http://www.google.com/", timeout);
 if (response.HttpStatusCode == HttpStatusCode.OK)
 {
     Console.Write(response.Response); // Print HTML.
 }

To call with parameters (uses a "POST" behind the scenes):

 var timeout = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(300);
 WebResponse response = await this.CallUri("http://example.com/path/to/page?name=ferret&color=purple", timeout);
 if (response.HttpStatusCode == HttpStatusCode.OK)
 {
     Console.Write(response.Response); // Print HTML.
 }