Is it possible to send HTTP POST with some form data with System.Net.WebClient?
If not, is there another library like WebClient that can do HTTP POST? I know I can use System.Net.HttpWebRequest, but I'm looking for something that is not as verbose.
Hopefully it will look like this:
Using client As New TheHTTPLib
client.FormData("parm1") = "somevalue"
result = client.DownloadString(someurl, Method.POST)
End Using
Based on @carlosfigueira 's answer, I looked further into WebClient's methods and found UploadValues, which is exactly what I want:
Using client As New Net.WebClient
Dim reqparm As New Specialized.NameValueCollection
reqparm.Add("param1", "somevalue")
reqparm.Add("param2", "othervalue")
Dim responsebytes = client.UploadValues(someurl, "POST", reqparm)
Dim responsebody = (New Text.UTF8Encoding).GetString(responsebytes)
End Using
The key part is this:
client.UploadValues(someurl, "POST", reqparm)
It sends whatever verb I type in, and it also helps me create a properly url encoded form data, I just have to supply the parameters as a namevaluecollection.
WebClient
doesn't have a direct support for form data, but you can send a HTTP post by using the UploadString method:
Using client as new WebClient
result = client.UploadString(someurl, "param1=somevalue¶m2=othervalue")
End Using
As far as the http verb is concerned the WebRequest
might be easier. You could go for something like:
WebRequest r = WebRequest.Create("http://some.url");
r.Method = "POST";
using (var s = r.GetResponse().GetResponseStream())
{
using (var reader = new StreamReader(r, FileMode.Open))
{
var content = reader.ReadToEnd();
}
}
Obviously this lacks exception handling and writing the request body (for which you can use r.GetRequestStream()
and write it like a regular stream, but I hope it may be of some help.