Read HttpContent in WebApi controller

Question

How can I read the contents on the PUT request in MVC webApi controller action.

[HttpPut]
public HttpResponseMessage Put(int accountId, Contact contact)
{
    var httpContent = Request.Content;
    var asyncContent = httpContent.ReadAsStringAsync().Result;
...

I get empty string here :(

What I need to do is: figure out "what properties" were modified/sent in the initial request (meaning that if the Contact object has 10 properties, and I want to update only 2 of them, I send and object with only two properties, something like this:

{

    "FirstName": null,
    "LastName": null,
    "id": 21
}

The expected end result is

List<string> modified_properties = {"FirstName", "LastName"}

Answer 1

By design the body content in ASP.NET Web API is treated as forward-only stream that can be read only once.

The first read in your case is being done when Web API is binding your model, after that the Request.Content will not return anything.

You can remove the contact from your action parameters, get the content and deserialize it manually into object (for example with Json.NET):

[HttpPut]
public HttpResponseMessage Put(int accountId)
{
    HttpContent requestContent = Request.Content;
    string jsonContent = requestContent.ReadAsStringAsync().Result;
    CONTACT contact = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<CONTACT>(jsonContent);
    ...
}

That should do the trick (assuming that accountId is URL parameter so it will not be treated as content read).

Answer 2

You can keep your CONTACT parameter with the following approach:

using (var stream = new MemoryStream())
{
    var context = (HttpContextBase)Request.Properties["MS_HttpContext"];
    context.Request.InputStream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);
    context.Request.InputStream.CopyTo(stream);
    string requestBody = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(stream.ToArray());
}

Returned for me the json representation of my parameter object, so I could use it for exception handling and logging.

Found as accepted answer here

Answer 3

Even though this solution might seem obvious, I just wanted to post it here so the next guy will google it faster.

If you still want to have the model as a parameter in the method, you can create a DelegatingHandler to buffer the content.

internal sealed class BufferizingHandler : DelegatingHandler
{
    protected override async Task<HttpResponseMessage> SendAsync(HttpRequestMessage request, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
    {
        await request.Content.LoadIntoBufferAsync();
        var result = await base.SendAsync(request, cancellationToken);
        return result;
    }
}

And add it to the global message handlers:

configuration.MessageHandlers.Add(new BufferizingHandler());

This solution is based on the answer by Darrel Miller.

This way all the requests will be buffered.

Answer 4

The easiest way to read the content of any request usually is to use an http proxy like fiddler

That has the massive advantage of showing you all local traffic (plus the complete requests - headers etc) and lots of other requests which reading the Request content inside a particular action in a particular controller will not show you - e.g. 401 / 404 etc.

You can also use fiddler's composer to create test requests from scratch or by modifying previous requests.

If you for some reason cannot use a proxy or must view the request from inside the web app then this answer looks sensible