WebClient restful Delete

Question

I have a simple Restful service being called from a console app so am using WebClient. I am wondering if this call for Delete is correct.

The url looks like localhost/RestService1/Person/1

using (var client = new WebClient()) 
{
    client.UploadString(url, "DELETE", "");
}

I don't like that UploadString does not have an overload without a data parameter. The passing of an empty parameter is not sitting well with me. Is there a better method to use for a DELETE?

I could use WebRequest but I want to just use WebClient to keep it consistent.

Here is the WebRequest block

var request = WebRequest.Create(url);
request.Method = "DELETE";
var response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();

Both blocks work fine but what is best? Or is there a better way?

Sirois

See also: #2539894 – Fibrinous

see also: https://mcmap.net/q/451965/-restful-delete-strategy – Fibrinous

Other than the relation to DELETE and RESTful in those references, I don't think WebClient really gives you the semantics of DELETE. Webclient just uses WebRequest (HttpWebRequest) under the covers, so I think using HttpWebRequest) directly is more readable. – Fibrinous

I don't think the first 2 links refer to my question. My url is localhost/RestService1/Person/1 where /1 is the person Id, so it is restful. I did a little more digging and see that WebClient is mostly a wrapper. thanks – Sirois

Answer 1

The following works for me:

client.UploadValues(url, "DELETE", new NameValueCollection()); 

Saltigrade

And if you need to provide additional parameters (e.g. api_key), you can provide them via query string in the url. – Collotype

client.UploadString(url, "DELETE", string.Empty) worked as well – Extrinsic

Answer 2

The WebClient class doesn't really lend well to restful api consumption, I've used 3rd party libraries like RestSharp in the past that are geared more towards this type of web request. I'm pretty sure RestSharp just uses HttpWebRequest under the covers, but it provides a lot of semantics that make consuming and reusing rest resources easier.

Thundery

I am using WebClient with Newtonsoft Json and it is very simple to use. I'll look into RestSharp. Thanks – Sirois

Answer 3

Go get the Microsoft.Net.Http client libraries http://nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.Net.Http

HttpClient is a much better client to use for working with an API.

Battista

This package is not supported in Visual Studio 2010, and is only required for projects targeting .NET Framework 4.5 or .NET for Windows Store apps when consuming a library that uses this package. – Monogamist

@Monogamist It is supported in VS2010 and in .net 4.0. I'm not sure why you would think otherwise. – Battista

I just quoted the link you provided: nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.Net.Http – Monogamist

@Monogamist Aaah. Unfortunately the content of that link changed since I posted it! That's the pre-release "portable library" version of HttpClient. If you go for the stable one you will get a .net 4/VS2010 compatible version. – Battista

HttpClient is clumsy in usage, since contains only ASYNC methods (what is not always desirable). Moreover - MS docs says HttpClient is NOT replacement for WebClient. – Garpike

Answer 4

Sorry this is my solution in vb.net i sure that anyone can translate to c#

It's very important to drop headers, i had to comment header about Accept and Content-Type and work fine..... of course I did send the token

Dim rest As WebClient = New WebClient()
rest.Headers.Add(HttpRequestHeader.Authorization, "Bearer " & Token)
'rest.Headers.Add(HttpRequestHeader.Accept, "application/json")
'rest.Headers.Add(HttpRequestHeader.ContentType, "application/json")

result = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetString(rest.UploadValues(host_api & uri, "DELETE", New NameValueCollection()))

Chlorella