HttpWebRequest Class

Definition

Provides an HTTP-specific implementation of the WebRequest class.

public ref class HttpWebRequest : System::Net::WebRequest
public ref class HttpWebRequest : System::Net::WebRequest, System::Runtime::Serialization::ISerializable
public class HttpWebRequest : System.Net.WebRequest
public class HttpWebRequest : System.Net.WebRequest, System.Runtime.Serialization.ISerializable
[System.Serializable]
public class HttpWebRequest : System.Net.WebRequest, System.Runtime.Serialization.ISerializable
type HttpWebRequest = class
    inherit WebRequest
type HttpWebRequest = class
    inherit WebRequest
    interface ISerializable
[<System.Serializable>]
type HttpWebRequest = class
    inherit WebRequest
    interface ISerializable
Public Class HttpWebRequest
Inherits WebRequest
Public Class HttpWebRequest
Inherits WebRequest
Implements ISerializable
Inheritance
HttpWebRequest
Inheritance
Attributes
Implements

Examples

The following code example creates an HttpWebRequest for the URI http://www.contoso.com/.

HttpWebRequest^ myReq = dynamic_cast<HttpWebRequest^>(WebRequest::Create( "http://www.contoso.com/" ));

HttpWebRequest myReq =
(HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("http://www.contoso.com/");

Dim myReq As HttpWebRequest = _
    WebRequest.Create("http://www.contoso.com/")

Remarks

Important

We don't recommend that you use HttpWebRequest for new development. Instead, use the System.Net.Http.HttpClient class.

The HttpWebRequest class provides support for the properties and methods defined in WebRequest and for additional properties and methods that enable the user to interact directly with servers using HTTP.

Do not use the HttpWebRequest constructor. Use the WebRequest.Create method to initialize new HttpWebRequest objects. If the scheme for the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) is http:// or https://, Create returns an HttpWebRequest object.

The GetResponse method makes a synchronous request to the resource specified in the RequestUri property and returns an HttpWebResponse that contains the response object. The response data can be received by using the stream returned by GetResponseStream. If the response object or the response stream is closed, remaining data will be forfeited. The remaining data will be drained and the socket will be re-used for subsequent requests when closing the response object or stream if the following conditions hold: it's a keep-alive or pipelined request, only a small amount of data needs to be received, or the remaining data is received in a small time interval. If none of the mentioned conditions hold or the drain time is exceeded, the socket will be closed. For keep-alive or pipelined connections, we strongly recommend that the application reads the streams until EOF. This ensures that the socket will be re-used for subsequent requests resulting in better performance and less resources used.

When you want to send data to the resource, the GetRequestStream method returns a Stream object to use to send data. The BeginGetRequestStream and EndGetRequestStream methods provide asynchronous access to the send data stream.

For client authentication with HttpWebRequest, the client certificate must be installed in the My certificate store of the current user.

The HttpWebRequest class throws a WebException when errors occur while accessing a resource. The WebException.Status property contains a WebExceptionStatus value that indicates the source of the error. When WebException.Status is WebExceptionStatus.ProtocolError, the Response property contains the HttpWebResponse received from the resource.

HttpWebRequest exposes common HTTP header values sent to the Internet resource as properties, set by methods, or set by the system; the following table contains a complete list. You can set other headers in the Headers property as name/value pairs. Note that servers and caches may change or add headers during the request.

The following table lists the HTTP headers that are set either by properties or methods or the system.

Header Set by
Accept Set by the Accept property.
Connection Set by the Connection property, KeepAlive property.
Content-Length Set by the ContentLength property.
Content-Type Set by the ContentType property.
Expect Set by the Expect property.
Date Set by the system to current date.
Host Set by the system to current host information.
If-Modified-Since Set by the IfModifiedSince property.
Range Set by the AddRange method.
Referer Set by the Referer property.
Transfer-Encoding Set by the TransferEncoding property (the SendChunked property must be true).
User-Agent Set by the UserAgent property.

Note

HttpWebRequest is registered automatically. You do not need to call the RegisterPrefix method to register System.Net.HttpWebRequest before using URIs beginning with http:// or https://.

The local computer or application config file may specify that a default proxy be used. If the Proxy property is specified, then the proxy settings from the Proxy property override the local computer or application config file and the HttpWebRequest instance will use the proxy settings specified. If no proxy is specified in a config file and the Proxy property is unspecified, the HttpWebRequest class uses the proxy settings inherited from Internet Explorer on the local computer. If there are no proxy settings in Internet Explorer, the request is sent directly to the server.

The HttpWebRequest class parses a proxy bypass list with wildcard characters inherited from Internet Explorer differently than the bypass list is parsed directly by Internet Explorer. For example, the HttpWebRequest class will parse a bypass list of "nt*" from Internet Explorer as a regular expression of "nt.$". This differs from the native behavior of Internet Explorer. So a URL of "http://intxxxxx" would bypass the proxy using the HttpWebRequest class, but would not bypass the proxy using Internet Explorer.

Note

The Framework caches SSL sessions as they are created and attempts to reuse a cached session for a new request, if possible. When attempting to reuse an SSL session, the Framework uses the first element of ClientCertificates (if there is one), or tries to reuse an anonymous sessions if ClientCertificates is empty.

Note

For security reasons, cookies are disabled by default. If you want to use cookies, use the CookieContainer property to enable cookies.

The .NET Framework 4.6 includes a new security feature that blocks insecure cipher and hashing algorithms for connections. Applications using TLS/SSL through APIs such as HttpClient, HttpWebRequest, FTPClient, SmtpClient, SslStream, etc. and targeting .NET Framework 4.6 get the more-secure behavior by default.

Developers may want to opt out of this behavior in order to maintain interoperability with their existing SSL3 services OR TLS w/ RC4 services. This article explains how to modify your code so that the new behavior is disabled.

Constructors

HttpWebRequest()
Obsolete.
Obsolete.

Initializes a new instance of the HttpWebRequest class. This constructor is obsolete.

HttpWebRequest(SerializationInfo, StreamingContext)
Obsolete.
Obsolete.
Obsolete.
Obsolete.

Initializes a new instance of the HttpWebRequest class from the specified instances of the SerializationInfo and StreamingContext classes. This constructor is obsolete.

HttpWebRequest(Uri)

Properties

Accept

Gets or sets the value of the Accept HTTP header.

Address

Gets the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) of the Internet resource that actually responds to the request.

AllowAutoRedirect

Gets or sets a value that indicates whether the request should follow redirection responses.

AllowReadStreamBuffering

Gets or sets a value that indicates whether to buffer the received from the Internet resource.

AllowWriteStreamBuffering

Gets or sets a value that indicates whether to buffer the data sent to the Internet resource.

AuthenticationLevel

Gets or sets values indicating the level of authentication and impersonation used for this request.

(Inherited from WebRequest)
AutomaticDecompression

Gets or sets the type of decompression that is used.

CachePolicy

Gets or sets the cache policy for this request.

(Inherited from WebRequest)
ClientCertificates

Gets or sets the collection of security certificates that are associated with this request.

Connection

Gets or sets the value of the Connection HTTP header.

ConnectionGroupName

Gets or sets the name of the connection group for the request.

ConnectionGroupName

When overridden in a descendant class, gets or sets the name of the connection group for the request.

(Inherited from WebRequest)
ContentLength

Gets or sets the Content-length HTTP header.

ContentLength

When overridden in a descendant class, gets or sets the content length of the request data being sent.

(Inherited from WebRequest)
ContentType

Gets or sets the value of the Content-type HTTP header.

ContinueDelegate

Gets or sets the delegate method called when an HTTP 100-continue response is received from the Internet resource.

ContinueTimeout

Gets or sets a timeout, in milliseconds, to wait until the 100-Continue is received from the server.

CookieContainer

Gets or sets the cookies associated with the request.

CreatorInstance
Obsolete.

When overridden in a descendant class, gets the factory object derived from the IWebRequestCreate class used to create the WebRequest instantiated for making the request to the specified URI.

(Inherited from WebRequest)
Credentials

Gets or sets authentication information for the request.

Date

Gets or sets the Date HTTP header value to use in an HTTP request.

DefaultCachePolicy

Gets or sets the default cache policy for this request.

DefaultMaximumErrorResponseLength

Gets or sets the default maximum length of an HTTP error response.

DefaultMaximumResponseHeadersLength

Gets or sets the default for the MaximumResponseHeadersLength property.

Expect

Gets or sets the value of the Expect HTTP header.

HaveResponse

Gets a value that indicates whether a response has been received from an Internet resource.

Headers

Specifies a collection of the name/value pairs that make up the HTTP headers.

Host

Gets or sets the Host header value to use in an HTTP request independent from the request URI.

IfModifiedSince

Gets or sets the value of the If-Modified-Since HTTP header.

ImpersonationLevel

Gets or sets the impersonation level for the current request.

(Inherited from WebRequest)
KeepAlive

Gets or sets a value that indicates whether to make a persistent connection to the Internet resource.

MaximumAutomaticRedirections

Gets or sets the maximum number of redirects that the request follows.

MaximumResponseHeadersLength

Gets or sets the maximum allowed length of the response headers.

MediaType

Gets or sets the media type of the request.

Method

Gets or sets the method for the request.

Pipelined

Gets or sets a value that indicates whether to pipeline the request to the Internet resource.

PreAuthenticate

Gets or sets a value that indicates whether to send an Authorization header with the request.

PreAuthenticate

When overridden in a descendant class, indicates whether to pre-authenticate the request.

(Inherited from WebRequest)
ProtocolVersion

Gets or sets the version of HTTP to use for the request.

Proxy

Gets or sets proxy information for the request.

Proxy

When overridden in a descendant class, gets or sets the network proxy to use to access this Internet resource.

(Inherited from WebRequest)
ReadWriteTimeout

Gets or sets a time-out in milliseconds when writing to or reading from a stream.

Referer

Gets or sets the value of the Referer HTTP header.

RequestUri

Gets the original Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) of the request.

SendChunked

Gets or sets a value that indicates whether to send data in segments to the Internet resource.

ServerCertificateValidationCallback

Gets or sets a callback function to validate the server certificate.

ServicePoint

Gets the service point to use for the request.

SupportsCookieContainer

Gets a value that indicates whether the request provides support for a CookieContainer.

Timeout

Gets or sets the time-out value in milliseconds for the GetResponse() and GetRequestStream() methods.

Timeout

Gets or sets the length of time, in milliseconds, before the request times out.

(Inherited from WebRequest)
TransferEncoding

Gets or sets the value of the Transfer-encoding HTTP header.

UnsafeAuthenticatedConnectionSharing

Gets or sets a value that indicates whether to allow high-speed NTLM-authenticated connection sharing.

UseDefaultCredentials

Gets or sets a Boolean value that controls whether default credentials are sent with requests.

UseDefaultCredentials

When overridden in a descendant class, gets or sets a Boolean value that controls whether DefaultCredentials are sent with requests.

(Inherited from WebRequest)
UserAgent

Gets or sets the value of the User-agent HTTP header.

Methods

Abort()

Cancels a request to an Internet resource.

AddRange(Int32)

Adds a byte range header to a request for a specific range from the beginning or end of the requested data.

AddRange(Int32, Int32)

Adds a byte range header to the request for a specified range.

AddRange(Int64)

Adds a byte range header to a request for a specific range from the beginning or end of the requested data.

AddRange(Int64, Int64)

Adds a byte range header to the request for a specified range.

AddRange(String, Int32)

Adds a Range header to a request for a specific range from the beginning or end of the requested data.

AddRange(String, Int32, Int32)

Adds a range header to a request for a specified range.

AddRange(String, Int64)

Adds a Range header to a request for a specific range from the beginning or end of the requested data.

AddRange(String, Int64, Int64)

Adds a range header to a request for a specified range.

BeginGetRequestStream(AsyncCallback, Object)

Begins an asynchronous request for a Stream object to use to write data.

BeginGetResponse(AsyncCallback, Object)

Begins an asynchronous request to an Internet resource.

CreateObjRef(Type)

Creates an object that contains all the relevant information required to generate a proxy used to communicate with a remote object.

(Inherited from MarshalByRefObject)
EndGetRequestStream(IAsyncResult)

Ends an asynchronous request for a Stream object to use to write data.

EndGetRequestStream(IAsyncResult, TransportContext)

Ends an asynchronous request for a Stream object to use to write data and outputs the TransportContext associated with the stream.

EndGetResponse(IAsyncResult)

Ends an asynchronous request to an Internet resource.

Equals(Object)

Determines whether the specified object is equal to the current object.

(Inherited from Object)
GetHashCode()

Returns a hash value for a WebRequest instance.

GetHashCode()

Serves as the default hash function.

(Inherited from Object)
GetLifetimeService()
Obsolete.

Retrieves the current lifetime service object that controls the lifetime policy for this instance.

(Inherited from MarshalByRefObject)
GetObjectData(SerializationInfo, StreamingContext)
Obsolete.
Obsolete.
Obsolete.

Populates a SerializationInfo with the data required to serialize the target object.

GetObjectData(SerializationInfo, StreamingContext)
Obsolete.

Populates a SerializationInfo with the data needed to serialize the target object.

(Inherited from WebRequest)
GetRequestStream()

Gets a Stream object to use to write request data.

GetRequestStream()

When overridden in a descendant class, returns a Stream for writing data to the Internet resource.

(Inherited from WebRequest)
GetRequestStream(TransportContext)

Gets a Stream object to use to write request data and outputs the TransportContext associated with the stream.

GetRequestStreamAsync()

When overridden in a descendant class, returns a Stream for writing data to the Internet resource as an asynchronous operation.

(Inherited from WebRequest)
GetResponse()

Returns a response from an Internet resource.

GetResponse()

When overridden in a descendant class, returns a response to an Internet request.

(Inherited from WebRequest)
GetResponseAsync()

When overridden in a descendant class, returns a response to an Internet request as an asynchronous operation.

(Inherited from WebRequest)
GetType()

Gets the Type of the current instance.

(Inherited from Object)
InitializeLifetimeService()
Obsolete.

Obtains a lifetime service object to control the lifetime policy for this instance.

(Inherited from MarshalByRefObject)
MemberwiseClone()

Creates a shallow copy of the current Object.

(Inherited from Object)
MemberwiseClone(Boolean)

Creates a shallow copy of the current MarshalByRefObject object.

(Inherited from MarshalByRefObject)
ToString()

Returns a string that represents the current object.

(Inherited from Object)

Explicit Interface Implementations

ISerializable.GetObjectData(SerializationInfo, StreamingContext)
Obsolete.
Obsolete.
Obsolete.

Populates a SerializationInfo with the data needed to serialize the target object.

Applies to

See also