Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by johns 5366 days ago
No, no it's not. (Http)WebRequest IS AWFUL. I built RestSharp because HWR is so bad. WebClient is closer to requests, but still horribly awful if you know anything about HTTP.

The new System.Net.Http.HttpClient in .NET 4.5 is closer to Requests and not entirely bad, if a little rigid.
1 comments
DrJokepu 5366 days ago
Just out of curiosity, what's so awful about WebRequest? I've been using it for years for various things and never really had a problem with it.
link
johns 5366 days ago 

  - It's too low level for quick stuff
  - It handles HTTP basic auth wrong
  - It throws an exception, AN EXCEPTION, for any response that isn't 2xx
  - Async is an ugly mess
  - In love with streams
  - Horribly inconsistent across framework profiles
  - ServicePointManager.Expect100Continue
  - Inconsistent header handling and restrictions
  - Terrible cookie API
link
burke_holland 5365 days ago
I think it's fine for simple scenarios (i.e. plain GET), but it breaks down in a hurry and the fact that you have to read out of the response stream is real overhead.
link
masklinn 5365 days ago
> I think it's fine for simple scenarios (i.e. plain GET)

So's python's urllib2, the point of `request` is that as soon as you go even slightly beyond very basic GET and POST, it breaks down quickly in a horrible mess.

link
mattmanser 5365 days ago
It's not fine for a plain GET, it's awful.

I'm still surprised every time I use it that they've not released a modern library for it in .Net.

link
ArbitraryLimits 5365 days ago
The async handling was the deal breaker for me. I gritted my teeth through the other stuff but finally gave up at that point.
link
glassx 5366 days ago
I'm not your parent poster but I personally dislike that you have to instantiate a separated Response object, and that you have to fetch a stream, even for tiny responses. In those Python/Ruby frameworks it's just one line. I always end up writing a wrapper just to change it.

And this one is a pet peeve, but I hate that verbose stateful OO idiom where you instantiate an object (with a factory) and then use setters to change properties, instead of setting it all in a single command. I don't know if other .NET HTTP libraries change that, though...

link