Using HttpLib to consume web services

Introduction

While C# offers many ways for programmers to consume services from web services with relative ease, writing asynchronously takes more effort to implement than you’d like.  Windows Communication Framework is a great tool for client/server communication in new builds, I've often found myself having to write a lot of code to use existing APIs. To achieve this, WebClient or HttpWebRequest are used in C#, however these libraries that Microsoft provide are often too complex for most simple uses. HttpLib makes it easier to asynchronously consume data from web services in C#. The library contains methods to upload files to server and get pages in one line statements, rather than 30 lines needed to use HttpWebReqeust. 

This now library has Windows Store compatible source and binaries available - in detail updates and explanations on my blog http://jthorne.co.uk/blog/category/httplib 

HttpLib can be downloaded from the codeplex site on http://httplib.codeplex.com/. 

Background  

Users should be familiar with GET, POST, and similar web request types prior to using this library, however extensive knowledge is not needed.

Using the code 

GET a web page

This asynchronous method asynchronously gets a web page and passes the result into a lambda expression.  

Request.Get("http://codeproject.com/", 
result=>
{
    Console.Write(result);
});

POSTing data to web services 

Data can be posted to web services in a similar manner. Parameters can be passed into an anonymous object which is later serialized into the request body. 

Request.Post("http://testing.local/post.php", new {name="James",username="Redslide"}, 
result=>
{
    Console.Write(result);
}); 

Uploading Files to server.

The library facilitates Multipart/form-encoded file uploads. FileStreams can be copied into the web request as shown below.  The use of a stream allows the library to used in Silverlight applications for uploading an ImageStream directly from the camera. 

Request.Upload("http://testing.local/post.php", new {name = "value"},
new [] {new NamedFileStream("file", "photo.jpg", "image/jpeg", 
             new FileStream(@"C:\photo.jpg",FileMode.Open))}, 
result=>
{
    Console.Write(result);
});

Points of Interest 

Anonymous Object Serialization

Anonymous objects are serialized using reflection. A list of all properties of an object can be obtained using GetProperties(). This allows the serializer to iterate through and get all the required values. 

foreach (var property in Parameters.GetType().GetProperties())
{
    string name = property.Name
    string value = property.GetValue(Parameters, null).ToString();
}

History  

• 1/5/2013 - Windows 8 info added 
• 1/1/2013 - Changed type from article to tip.
• 30/12/2012 - First revision.