Grabbing website title is too slow

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Hi,

I am using below code to grab website title and I also want later to grab the website photo(s) just like what Facebook, linkedin and twitter is doing

The problem I facing here that it is too slow and takes very long time to show the title unlike when you do it using facebook or linkedin for example

How can I fix that please?

Thanks,
Jassim

What I have tried:

private async void Button_Clicked(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    LabelWebsiteURL.Text = EntryURL.Text;

    HttpClient hc = new HttpClient();
    HttpResponseMessage response = await hc.GetAsync(new Uri(LabelWebsiteURL.Text, UriKind.Absolute));
    string source = await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();

    string title = Regex.Match(source, @"\<title\b[^>]*\>\s*(?<Title>[\s\S]*?)\</title\>", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase).Groups["Title"].Value;

    LabelWebsiteTitle.Text = title;
}

Posted 16-Feb-20 2:23am

Jassim Rahma

Updated 19-Feb-20 2:05am

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Comments

Richard MacCutchan 16-Feb-20 9:21am

As I told you earlier, your code has to wait for the remote site to send a response and then read all the text for the Regex to find what you are looking for. You cannot increase the speed of remote sites through coding.

[no name] 16-Feb-20 10:07am

"You cannot increase the speed of remote sites through coding": +5

Richard MacCutchan 16-Feb-20 10:51am

Ha ha, but what do I know?

[no name] 16-Feb-20 11:13am

Ever bothered to check the length of data returned?

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Richard Deeming · Answer 1 · 2020-02-19T02:06:00

As Richard said, you can't do anything in your code to make the remote site return a response any faster.

However, you can potentially shave a small amount of time and memory off by streaming the response, and only reading up to the closing </head> tag.

For example:

C#

public static class HttpContentExtensions
{
    public static async Task<string> ExtractHtmlHeadAsync(this HttpContent content)
    {
        if (content is null) throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(content));
        
        using (var stream = await content.ReadAsStreamAsync())
        using (var reader = new StreamReader(stream))
        {
            int charsRead;
            char[] buffer = new char[1024];
            var sb = new StringBuilder();
            
            while ((charsRead = await reader.ReadBlockAsync(buffer, 0, buffer.Length)) != 0)
            {
                sb.Append(buffer, 0, charsRead);
                
                int index = FindClosingHeadIndex(sb);
                if (index != -1)
                {
                    sb.Length = index + 7;
                    break;
                }
            }
            
            return sb.ToString();
        }
    }
    
    private static int FindClosingHeadIndex(StringBuilder sb)
    {
        for (int index = 0; index < sb.Length - 6; index++)
        {
            if (sb[index] == '<'
                && sb[index + 1] == '/'
                && sb[index + 6] == '>'
                && (sb[index + 2] == 'h' || sb[index + 2] == 'H')
                && (sb[index + 3] == 'e' || sb[index + 3] == 'E')
                && (sb[index + 4] == 'a' || sb[index + 4] == 'A')
                && (sb[index + 5] == 'd' || sb[index + 2] == 'D'))
            {
                return index;
            }
        }
        
        return -1;
    }
}

C#

private void Button_Clicked(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    if (!Uri.TryCreate(EntryURL.Text, UriKind.Absolute, out var url))
    {
        MessageBox.Show("Please enter a valid URL!");
        return;
    }
    
    _ = LoadWebsiteTitleAsync(url);
}

private async Task LoadWebsiteTitleAsync(Uri url)
{
    LabelWebsiteURL.Text = url.ToString();
    
    var hc = new HttpClient();
    
    using (var response = await hc.GetAsync(url, HttpCompletionOption.ResponseContentRead))
    {
        string source = await response.Content.ExtractHtmlHeadAsync();
        Match match = Regex.Match(source, @"\<title\b[^>]*\>\s*(?<Title>[\s\S]*?)\s*\</title\>", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);
        string title = match.Success ? match.Groups["Title"].Value : "# Untitled page #";
        LabelWebsiteTitle.Text = title;
    }
}

NB: Avoid async void methods | You’ve Been Haacked[^]
Async Guidance - David Fowler[^]