Read Http Request into Byte array

Question

I\'m developing a web page that needs to take an HTTP Post Request and read it into a byte array for further processing. I\'m kind of stuck on how to do this, and I\'m stumped

Answer 1

class WebFetch
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
    // used to build entire input
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

    // used on each read operation
    byte[] buf = new byte[8192];

    // prepare the web page we will be asking for
    HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)
        WebRequest.Create(@"http://www.google.com/search?q=google");

    // execute the request
    HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)
        request.GetResponse();

    // we will read data via the response stream
    Stream resStream = response.GetResponseStream();

    string tempString = null;
    int count = 0;

    do
    {
        // fill the buffer with data
        count = resStream.Read(buf, 0, buf.Length);

        // make sure we read some data
        if (count != 0)
        {
            // translate from bytes to ASCII text
            tempString = Encoding.ASCII.GetString(buf, 0, count);

            // continue building the string
            sb.Append(tempString);
        }
    }
    while (count > 0); // any more data to read?

    // print out page source
    Console.WriteLine(sb.ToString());
    Console.Read();
    }
}

Answer 2

I have a function that does it, by sending in the response stream:

private byte[] ReadFully(Stream input)
{
    try
    {
        int bytesBuffer = 1024;
        byte[] buffer = new byte[bytesBuffer];
        using (MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream())
        {
            int readBytes;
            while ((readBytes = input.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length)) > 0)
            {
               ms.Write(buffer, 0, readBytes);
            }
            return ms.ToArray();
        }
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        // Exception handling here:  Response.Write("Ex.: " + ex.Message);
    }
}

Since you have Stream str = curContext.Request.InputStream;, you could then just do:

byte[] bytes = ReadFully(str);

If you had done this:

HttpWebRequest req = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(someUri);
req.Credentials = CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;
HttpWebResponse resp = (HttpWebResponse)req.GetResponse();

You would call it this way:

byte[] bytes = ReadFully(resp.GetResponseStream());

Answer 3

I use MemoryStream and Response.GetResponseStream().CopyTo(stream)

HttpWebRequest myRequest = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url);
myRequest.Method = "GET";
WebResponse myResponse = myRequest.GetResponse();
MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
myResponse.GetResponseStream().CopyTo(ms);
byte[] data = ms.ToArray();

Answer 4

You can just use WebClient for that...

WebClient c = new WebClient();
byte [] responseData = c.DownloadData(..)

Where .. is the URL address for the data.

Answer 5

For all those cases when your context.Request.ContentLength is greather than zero, you can simply do:

byte[] contentBytes = context.Request.BinaryRead(context.Request.ContentLength);

Answer 6

The simplest way is to copy it to a MemoryStream - then call ToArray if you need to.

If you're using .NET 4, that's really easy:

MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
curContext.Request.InputStream.CopyTo(ms);
// If you need it...
byte[] data = ms.ToArray();

EDIT: If you're not using .NET 4, you can create your own implementation of CopyTo. Here's a version which acts as an extension method:

public static void CopyTo(this Stream source, Stream destination)
{
    // TODO: Argument validation
    byte[] buffer = new byte[16384]; // For example...
    int bytesRead;
    while ((bytesRead = source.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length)) > 0)
    {
        destination.Write(buffer, 0, bytesRead);
    }
}