HttpWebRequest timeout handling

Question

I have a really simple question. I am uploading files to a server using HTTP POST. The thing is I need to specially handle connection timeouts and add a bit of a waiting algorithm after a timeout has occurred to relive the server.

My code is pretty simple:

HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("SomeURI"); request.Method = "POST"; request.ContentType = "application/octet-stream"; request.KeepAlive = true; request.Accept = "*/*"; request.Timeout = 300000; request.AllowWriteStreamBuffering = false;  try {       using (HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse())       {             WebHeaderCollection headers = response.Headers;                 using (Stream Answer = response.GetResponseStream())             {                 // Handle.             }       } } catch (WebException e) {     if (Timeout_exception)     {        //Handle timeout exception     } } 

I omitted the file reading code as it is not our concern. Now I need to make sure that once a WebException is thrown, I filter the exception to see if it is indeed a timeout exception. I thought of comparing against the exception message yet I am not sure if this is the right way since the application in question is a commercial app and I am afraid that the message varies between different languages. And what message should I be looking for.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

You can look at WebException.Status. The WebExceptionStatus enum has a Timeout flag:

try {    using (HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse())    {       WebHeaderCollection headers = response.Headers;           using (Stream answer = response.GetResponseStream())       {           // Do stuff       }    } } catch (WebException e) {    if (e.Status == WebExceptionStatus.Timeout)    {       // Handle timeout exception    }    else throw; } 

Using C# 6 exception filters can come in handy here:

try {     var request = WebRequest.Create("http://www.google.com");     using (HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse())     {         WebHeaderCollection headers = response.Headers;         using (Stream answer = response.GetResponseStream())         {             // Do stuff         }     } } catch (WebException e) when (e.Status == WebExceptionStatus.Timeout) {     // If we got here, it was a timeout exception. }