Web API as a Proxy and Chunked Transfer Encoding

Question

I have been playing around with using Web API (Web Host) as a proxy server and have run into an issue with how my Web API proxy handles responses with the \"Transfer-Encodi

Answer 1

From an HttpClient standpoint, content chunking is essentially a detail of the transport. The content provided by response.Content is always de-chunked for you by HttpClient.

It looks like there's a bug in Web API that it doesn't correctly (re-)chunk content when requested by the response.Headers.TransferEncodingChunked property when running on IIS. So the problem is that the proxy is telling the client, via the headers, that the content is chunked when in fact it is not. I've filed the bug here: https://aspnetwebstack.codeplex.com/workitem/1124

I think your workaround is the best option at the moment.

Also notice that you have multiple layers here that likely weren't designed/tested for proxying scenarios (and may not support it). On the HttpClient side, note that it will automatically decompress and follow redirects unless you turn that behavior off. At a minimum, you'll want to set these two properties: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.http.httpclienthandler.allowautoredirect.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.http.httpclienthandler.automaticdecompression.aspx

On the WebApi/IIS side, you've found at least one bug, and it wouldn't be suprising to find others as well. Just be forewarned there may be bugs like this currently writing a proxy using these technologies outside their main design use cases.