HttpClientHandler / HttpClient Memory Leak

Question

I have anywhere from 10-150 long living class objects that call methods performing simple HTTPS API calls using HttpClient. Example of a PUT call:

Answer 1

This is how I change the HttpClientHandler proxy without recreating the object.

public static void ChangeProxy(this HttpClientHandler handler, WebProxy newProxy)
{
    if (handler.Proxy is WebProxy currentHandlerProxy)
    {
        currentHandlerProxy.Address = newProxy.Address;
        currentHandlerProxy.Credentials = newProxy.Credentials;
    }
    else
    {
        handler.Proxy = newProxy;
    }
}

Answer 2

Here is a basic Api Client that uses the HttpClient and HttpClientHandler efficiently. Do NOT recreate HTTPClient for each request. Reuse Httpclient as much as possible

My Performance Api Client

using System;
using System.Net;
using System.Net.Http;
using System.Net.Http.Headers;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
//You need to install package Newtonsoft.Json > https://www.nuget.org/packages/Newtonsoft.Json/
using Newtonsoft.Json;
using Newtonsoft.Json.Serialization;

namespace MyApiClient 
{
    public class MyApiClient : IDisposable
    {
        private readonly TimeSpan _timeout;
        private HttpClient _httpClient;
        private HttpClientHandler _httpClientHandler;
        private readonly string _baseUrl;
        private const string ClientUserAgent = "my-api-client-v1";
        private const string MediaTypeJson = "application/json";

        public MyApiClient(string baseUrl, TimeSpan? timeout = null)
        {
            _baseUrl = NormalizeBaseUrl(baseUrl);
            _timeout = timeout ?? TimeSpan.FromSeconds(90);
        }

        public async Task<string> PostAsync(string url, object input)
        {
            EnsureHttpClientCreated();

            using (var requestContent = new StringContent(ConvertToJsonString(input), Encoding.UTF8, MediaTypeJson))
            {
                using (var response = await _httpClient.PostAsync(url, requestContent))
                {
                    response.EnsureSuccessStatusCode();
                    return await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();
                }
            }
        }

        public async Task<TResult> PostAsync<TResult>(string url, object input) where TResult : class, new()
        {
            var strResponse = await PostAsync(url, input);

            return JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<TResult>(strResponse, new JsonSerializerSettings
            {
                ContractResolver = new CamelCasePropertyNamesContractResolver()
            });
        }

        public async Task<TResult> GetAsync<TResult>(string url) where TResult : class, new()
        {
            var strResponse = await GetAsync(url);

            return JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<TResult>(strResponse, new JsonSerializerSettings
            {
                ContractResolver = new CamelCasePropertyNamesContractResolver()
            });
        }

        public async Task<string> GetAsync(string url)
        {
            EnsureHttpClientCreated();

            using (var response = await _httpClient.GetAsync(url))
            {
                response.EnsureSuccessStatusCode();
                return await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();
            }
        }

        public async Task<string> PutAsync(string url, object input)
        {
            return await PutAsync(url, new StringContent(JsonConvert.SerializeObject(input), Encoding.UTF8, MediaTypeJson));
        }

        public async Task<string> PutAsync(string url, HttpContent content)
        {
            EnsureHttpClientCreated();

            using (var response = await _httpClient.PutAsync(url, content))
            {
                response.EnsureSuccessStatusCode();
                return await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();
            }
        }

        public async Task<string> DeleteAsync(string url)
        {
            EnsureHttpClientCreated();

            using (var response = await _httpClient.DeleteAsync(url))
            {
                response.EnsureSuccessStatusCode();
                return await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();
            }
        }

        public void Dispose()
        {
            _httpClientHandler?.Dispose();
            _httpClient?.Dispose();
        }

        private void CreateHttpClient()
        {
            _httpClientHandler = new HttpClientHandler
            {
                AutomaticDecompression = DecompressionMethods.Deflate | DecompressionMethods.GZip
            };

            _httpClient = new HttpClient(_httpClientHandler, false)
            {
                Timeout = _timeout
            };

            _httpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.UserAgent.ParseAdd(ClientUserAgent);

            if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(_baseUrl))
            {
                _httpClient.BaseAddress = new Uri(_baseUrl);
            }

            _httpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Accept.Add(new MediaTypeWithQualityHeaderValue(MediaTypeJson));
        }

        private void EnsureHttpClientCreated()
        {
            if (_httpClient == null)
            {
                CreateHttpClient();
            }
        }

        private static string ConvertToJsonString(object obj)
        {
            if (obj == null)
            {
                return string.Empty;
            }

            return JsonConvert.SerializeObject(obj, new JsonSerializerSettings
            {
                ContractResolver = new CamelCasePropertyNamesContractResolver()
            });
        }

        private static string NormalizeBaseUrl(string url)
        {
            return url.EndsWith("/") ? url : url + "/";
        }
    }
}

---

The usage;

using ( var client = new MyApiClient("http://localhost:8080"))
{
    var response = client.GetAsync("api/users/findByUsername?username=alper").Result;
    var userResponse = client.GetAsync<MyUser>("api/users/findByUsername?username=alper").Result;
}

Note: If you are using a dependency injection library, please register MyApiClient as singleton. It's stateless and safe to reuse the same object for concrete requests.

Answer 3

Using the repro form Alexandr Nikitin, I was able to discover that this seems to happen ONLY when you have HttpClient be a short lived object. If you make the handler and client long lived this does not seem to happen:

using System;
using System.Net.Http;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

namespace HttpClientMemoryLeak
{
    using System.Net;
    using System.Threading;

    class Program
    {
        static HttpClientHandler handler = new HttpClientHandler();

        private static HttpClient client = new HttpClient(handler);

        public static async Task TestMethod()
        {
            try
            {
                using (var response = await client.PutAsync("http://localhost/any/url", null))
                {
                }
            }
            catch
            {
            }
        }

        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            for (int i = 0; i < 1000000; i++)
            {
                Thread.Sleep(10);
                TestMethod();
            }

            Console.WriteLine("Finished!");
            Console.ReadKey();
        }
    }
}

Answer 4

As Matt Clark mentioned, the default HttpClient leaks when you use it as a short-lived object and create new HttpClients per request.

As a workaround, I was able to keep using HttpClient as a short-lived object by using the following Nuget package instead of the built-in System.Net.Http assembly: https://www.nuget.org/packages/HttpClient

Not sure what the origin of this package is, however, as soon as I referenced it the memory leak disappeared. Make sure that you remove the reference to the built-in .NET System.Net.Http library and use the Nuget package instead.