Is HttpClient flawed when sending large files/content?

Question

After reading/googling about HttpClient, I have the impression that this component is not suitable for uploading large files or contents to REST services.

1. It seems that if the upload takes more than the established timeout, the transmission will fail. Does it make sense? What does this timeout means?

2. Getting progress information seems hard or requires add-ons.

So my questions are: Is it possible to sove these two issues without too much hassle? Otherwise, what's the best approach when working with large contents and REST services?

Answer 1

1. Yes, if the upload takes longer that the TimeOut, the upload will fail. This is a limitation of HttpClient. The most robust solution to this problem is the one that Thomas Levesque has written an article about, and linked in his comments to your question. You have to use HttpWebRequest instead of HttpClient.
2. If you want to get progress messages, open the file as a FileStream and manually iterate through it, copying bytes in increments onto the (upload) request stream. As you go, you can calculate your progress relative to the file size.

TL's code example. Be sure to read the article though!:

long UploadFile(string path, string url, string contentType)
{
    // Build request
    var request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url);
    request.Method = WebRequestMethods.Http.Post;
    request.AllowWriteStreamBuffering = false;
    request.ContentType = contentType;
    string fileName = Path.GetFileName(path);
    request.Headers["Content-Disposition"] = string.Format("attachment; filename=\"{0}\"", fileName);

    try
    {
        // Open source file
        using (var fileStream = File.OpenRead(path))
        {
            // Set content length based on source file length
            request.ContentLength = fileStream.Length;

            // Get the request stream with the default timeout
            using (var requestStream = request.GetRequestStreamWithTimeout())
            {
                // Upload the file with no timeout
                fileStream.CopyTo(requestStream);
            }
        }

        // Get response with the default timeout, and parse the response body
        using (var response = request.GetResponseWithTimeout())
        using (var responseStream = response.GetResponseStream())
        using (var reader = new StreamReader(responseStream))
        {
            string json = reader.ReadToEnd();
            var j = JObject.Parse(json);
            return j.Value<long>("Id");
        }
    }
    catch (WebException ex)
    {
        if (ex.Status == WebExceptionStatus.Timeout)
        {
            LogError(ex, "Timeout while uploading '{0}'", fileName);
        }
        else
        {
            LogError(ex, "Error while uploading '{0}'", fileName);
        }
        throw;
    }
}