How to return a string from async

Question

My method is calling a web service and working asynchronusly.

When getting response, everything works fine and I am getting my response.

The problem starts when I need to return this response.

here is the code of my method:

 public async Task<string> sendWithHttpClient(string requestUrl, string json)
        {
            try
            {
                Uri requestUri = new Uri(requestUrl);
                using (var client = new HttpClient())
                {
                    client.DefaultRequestHeaders.Clear();
                    ...//adding things to header and creating requestcontent
                    var response = await client.PostAsync(requestUri, requestContent);

                    if (response.IsSuccessStatusCode)
                    {

                        Debug.WriteLine("Success");
                        HttpContent stream = response.Content;
                        //Task<string> data = stream.ReadAsStringAsync();    
                        var data = await stream.ReadAsStringAsync();
                        Debug.WriteLine("data len: " + data.Length);
                        Debug.WriteLine("data: " + data);
                        return data;                       
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        Debug.WriteLine("Unsuccessful!");
                        Debug.WriteLine("response.StatusCode: " + response.StatusCode);
                        Debug.WriteLine("response.ReasonPhrase: " + response.ReasonPhrase);
                        HttpContent stream = response.Content;    
                        var data = await stream.ReadAsStringAsync();
                        return data;
                     }
                }
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                Debug.WriteLine("ex: " + ex.Message);
                return null;
            }

and I am calling it this way:

      Task <string> result =  wsUtils.sendWithHttpClient(fullReq, "");           
      Debug.WriteLine("result:: " + result); 

but when printing result I am seeing something like this: System.Threading.Tasks.Task

how can I get the result string as I did with data inside my method.

Answer 1

You need to do this since you are calling the async method synchronously:

  Task<string> result =  wsUtils.sendWithHttpClient(fullReq, "");           
  Debug.WriteLine("result:: " + result.Result); // Call the Result

Think of the Task<string> return type as a 'promise' to return a value in the future.

If you called the async method asynchronously then it would be like the following:

  string result =  await wsUtils.sendWithHttpClient(fullReq, "");           
  Debug.WriteLine("result:: " + result);