Read Http Request into Byte array

Question

I'm developing a web page that needs to take an HTTP Post Request and read it into a byte array for further processing. I'm kind of stuck on how to do this, and I'm stumped on what is the best way to accomplish. Here is my code so far:

 public override void ProcessRequest(HttpContext curContext)
    {
        if (curContext != null)
        {
            int totalBytes = curContext.Request.TotalBytes;
            string encoding = curContext.Request.ContentEncoding.ToString();
            int reqLength = curContext.Request.ContentLength;
            long inputLength = curContext.Request.InputStream.Length;
            Stream str = curContext.Request.InputStream;

         }
       }

I'm checking the length of the request and its total bytes which equals 128. Now do I just need to use a Stream object to get it into byte[] format? Am I going in the right direction? Not sure how to proceed. Any advice would be great. I need to get the entire HTTP request into byte[] field.

Thanks!

Encourage

Answer 1

The simplest way is to copy it to a MemoryStream - then call ToArray if you need to.

If you're using .NET 4, that's really easy:

MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
curContext.Request.InputStream.CopyTo(ms);
// If you need it...
byte[] data = ms.ToArray();

EDIT: If you're not using .NET 4, you can create your own implementation of CopyTo. Here's a version which acts as an extension method:

public static void CopyTo(this Stream source, Stream destination)
{
    // TODO: Argument validation
    byte[] buffer = new byte[16384]; // For example...
    int bytesRead;
    while ((bytesRead = source.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length)) > 0)
    {
        destination.Write(buffer, 0, bytesRead);
    }
}

Gymnasiarch

How would I use memory stream without the .CopyTo option? – Encourage

@Encryption: You can implement something very similar yourself - I'll edit it in a minute... – Gymnasiarch

So to get it into byte[] would I then just need destination.ToArray? – Encourage

@Encryption: You can use the code in the first part of the answer at that point. – Gymnasiarch

Answer 2

You can just use WebClient for that...

WebClient c = new WebClient();
byte [] responseData = c.DownloadData(..)

Where .. is the URL address for the data.

Atiana

Be aware that DownloadData will never throw exceptions for 4xx and 5xx – Northway

Answer 3

I use MemoryStream and Response.GetResponseStream().CopyTo(stream)

HttpWebRequest myRequest = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url);
myRequest.Method = "GET";
WebResponse myResponse = myRequest.GetResponse();
MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
myResponse.GetResponseStream().CopyTo(ms);
byte[] data = ms.ToArray();

Stonedead

Basically a duplicate of the accepted answer, just using a WebResponse, which the OP is not using. – Original

Answer 4

I have a function that does it, by sending in the response stream:

private byte[] ReadFully(Stream input)
{
    try
    {
        int bytesBuffer = 1024;
        byte[] buffer = new byte[bytesBuffer];
        using (MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream())
        {
            int readBytes;
            while ((readBytes = input.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length)) > 0)
            {
               ms.Write(buffer, 0, readBytes);
            }
            return ms.ToArray();
        }
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        // Exception handling here:  Response.Write("Ex.: " + ex.Message);
    }
}

Since you have Stream str = curContext.Request.InputStream;, you could then just do:

byte[] bytes = ReadFully(str);

If you had done this:

HttpWebRequest req = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(someUri);
req.Credentials = CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;
HttpWebResponse resp = (HttpWebResponse)req.GetResponse();

You would call it this way:

byte[] bytes = ReadFully(resp.GetResponseStream());

Original

Answer 5

class WebFetch
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
    // used to build entire input
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

    // used on each read operation
    byte[] buf = new byte[8192];

    // prepare the web page we will be asking for
    HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)
        WebRequest.Create(@"http://www.google.com/search?q=google");

    // execute the request
    HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)
        request.GetResponse();

    // we will read data via the response stream
    Stream resStream = response.GetResponseStream();

    string tempString = null;
    int count = 0;

    do
    {
        // fill the buffer with data
        count = resStream.Read(buf, 0, buf.Length);

        // make sure we read some data
        if (count != 0)
        {
            // translate from bytes to ASCII text
            tempString = Encoding.ASCII.GetString(buf, 0, count);

            // continue building the string
            sb.Append(tempString);
        }
    }
    while (count > 0); // any more data to read?

    // print out page source
    Console.WriteLine(sb.ToString());
    Console.Read();
    }
}

Washerwoman

Good code, but it assumes the data being fetched is string data. If it were a file or something else that needed to be kept as bytes, this wouldn't be the way to do it. I'll neither vote up nor down on this, though. – Original

Answer 6

For all those cases when your context.Request.ContentLength is greather than zero, you can simply do:

byte[] contentBytes = context.Request.BinaryRead(context.Request.ContentLength);

Reed

Answer 7

This works for me:

using MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
await HttpContext.Request.Body.CopyToAsync(ms);
byte[] fileBytes = ms.ToArray();

Cacodemon