C# HttpWebRequest with XML Structured Data

Question

I'm developing the client-side of a third party webservice. The purpose is that I send xml-file to the server. How should I attach the xml-file to the httpwebrequest? What contentType is needed? More suggestions?

I cannot use mtom or dime.ie because I am using httpwebrequest. I am unable to use WCF either.

Answer 1

Here is a very basic method of sending XML structured data using HttpWebRequest (by the way you need to use request.ContentType = "application/xml";) :

HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(new Uri(myUrl));
request.Method = "POST";
request.ContentType = "application/xml";
request.Accept = "application/xml";

XElement redmineRequestXML =
    new XElement("issue",
    new XElement("project_id", 17)
);

byte[] bytes = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(redmineRequestXML.ToString());

request.ContentLength = bytes.Length;

using (Stream putStream = request.GetRequestStream())
{
    putStream.Write(bytes, 0, bytes.Length);
}

// Log the response from Redmine RESTful service
using (HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse())
using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream()))
{
    Logger.Info("Response from Redmine Issue Tracker: " + reader.ReadToEnd());
}

I use this at one of my projects (NBug) to submit an issue report to my Redmine issue tracker which accepts XML structured data over web requests (via POST). If you need further examples, you can get a couple of fully featured examples here: http://nbug.codeplex.com/SourceControl/list/changesets (click 'Browse' under 'Latest Verion' label on the right then navigate to "NBug\Submit\Tracker\Redmine.cs")