Sending HTTP POST with System.Net.WebClient

Question

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

Answer 1

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&param2=othervalue")
End Using

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

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.