download a file using webclient method

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I have been given a task to download a file from URL for which i have written the following function

C#

void DownloadFile(string downloadLocation, string destinationLocation)
{
   WebClient myWebClient = new WebClient();
   myWebClient.DownloadFile(downloadLocation, destinationLocation);
}

The above code seems to be working fine on a number of files I ve tried to download but cannot work at all on one particular domain. What could be the issues?? and ofcourse the solution?

for Eg:

C#

DownloadFile("http://www.abc.com/1.jpg", @"C:\1.jpg"); //works fine
DownloadFile("http://www.abc.com/2.jpg", @"C:\2.jpg"); //works fine
DownloadFile("http://www.abc123.com/21.jpg", @"C:\21.jpg"); //works fine

but

C#

DownloadFile("http://www.xyz.com/a.jpg", @"C:\a.jpg"); //doesn't work
DownloadFile("http://www.xyz.com/abcd.jpg", @"C:\abcd.jpg"); //doesn't work

for those who think i am joking around ... all the files are easily downloadable when called via any browser including IE, firefox and chrome

Posted 14-Jun-13 12:22pm

Hasham Ahmad

Updated 15-Jun-13 12:21pm

v2

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Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 14-Jun-13 20:22pm

Can you download it using some existing software, such as a Web browser?
—SA

Hasham Ahmad 15-Jun-13 18:18pm

yeah ofcourse ... thats why i am worried sergey ...

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RadXPictures · Answer 1 · 2013-06-18T17:04:00

Solution 1

One possibility, and I can't really remember if I've encountered it before, is sometimes certain proxies and whatnot on the server may prohibit people from downloading their files. Each server has a different configuration, and maybe this one is blocking certain web requests. May I ask, what is the actual domain? (I take it it's not xyz.com)...

Posted 18-Jun-13 17:04pm

RadXPictures

Comments

Hasham Ahmad 19-Jun-13 1:57am

The server configuration is indeed blocking my webclient.downloadfile() function but the questions still remains that how the browser manages to download the file when the URL is called directly, can we call a function which can create a request similar to that of a web browser?

RadXPictures 19-Jun-13 11:30am

It may have to do with HTML header files (just a thought). Unfortunately I don't have much experience there, so you would have to investigate that. All I know is you can add headers via WebClient.Headers.Add(). You could also try putting your code in a Try/Catch block:

Try
{
//your code
}
Catch (Exception ex)
{
MessageBox.Show(ex.ToString());
}

RadXPictures 19-Jun-13 11:31am

^ it would at least give you a more specific error description

Hasham Ahmad 20-Jun-13 4:09am

The error is unable to connect to the server
anywayz ... i have used the different technique for the task but still wonder why the request generated by webclient.downloadfile is different from a normal web browser request