Post form data using HttpWebRequest

Question

I want to post some form data to a specified URL that isn't inside my own web application. It has the same domain, such like "domain.client.nl". The web application has a url "web.domain.client.nl" en the url where I want to post to is "idp.domain.client.nl". But my code does nothing..... does someone knows what I'm doing wrong?

Wouter

StringBuilder postData = new StringBuilder();
postData.Append(HttpUtility.UrlEncode(String.Format("username={0}&", uname)));
postData.Append(HttpUtility.UrlEncode(String.Format("password={0}&", pword)));
postData.Append(HttpUtility.UrlEncode(String.Format("url_success={0}&", urlSuccess)));
postData.Append(HttpUtility.UrlEncode(String.Format("url_failed={0}", urlFailed)));

ASCIIEncoding ascii = new ASCIIEncoding();
byte[] postBytes = ascii.GetBytes(postData.ToString());

// set up request object
HttpWebRequest request;
try
{
    request = (HttpWebRequest)HttpWebRequest.Create(WebSiteConstants.UrlIdp);
}
catch (UriFormatException)
{
    request = null;
}
if (request == null)
    throw new ApplicationException("Invalid URL: " + WebSiteConstants.UrlIdp);

request.Method = "POST";
request.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";
request.ContentLength = postBytes.Length;
request.UserAgent = "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)";

// add post data to request
Stream postStream = request.GetRequestStream();
postStream.Write(postBytes, 0, postBytes.Length);
postStream.Flush();
postStream.Close();

Answer 1

Both the field name and the value should be url encoded. format of the post data and query string are the same

The .net way of doing is something like this

NameValueCollection outgoingQueryString = HttpUtility.ParseQueryString(String.Empty);
outgoingQueryString.Add("field1","value1");
outgoingQueryString.Add("field2", "value2");
string postdata = outgoingQueryString.ToString();

This will take care of encoding the fields and the value names

Answer 2

Try this:

var request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("http://www.example.com/recepticle.aspx");

var postData = "thing1=hello";
    postData += "&thing2=world";
var data = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(postData);

request.Method = "POST";
request.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";
request.ContentLength = data.Length;

using (var stream = request.GetRequestStream())
{
    stream.Write(data, 0, data.Length);
}

var response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();

var responseString = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream()).ReadToEnd();

Answer 3

You are encoding the form incorrectly. You should only encode the values:

StringBuilder postData = new StringBuilder();
postData.Append("username=" + HttpUtility.UrlEncode(uname) + "&");
postData.Append("password=" + HttpUtility.UrlEncode(pword) + "&");
postData.Append("url_success=" + HttpUtility.UrlEncode(urlSuccess) + "&");
postData.Append("url_failed=" + HttpUtility.UrlEncode(urlFailed));

edit

I was incorrect. According to RFC1866 section 8.2.1 both names and values should be encoded.

But for the given example, the names do not have any characters that needs to be encoded, so in this case my code example is correct ;)

The code in the question is still incorrect as it would encode the equal sign which is the reason to why the web server cannot decode it.

A more proper way would have been:

StringBuilder postData = new StringBuilder();
postData.AppendUrlEncoded("username", uname);
postData.AppendUrlEncoded("password", pword);
postData.AppendUrlEncoded("url_success", urlSuccess);
postData.AppendUrlEncoded("url_failed", urlFailed);

//in an extension class
public static void AppendUrlEncoded(this StringBuilder sb, string name, string value)
{
    if (sb.Length != 0)
        sb.Append("&");
    sb.Append(HttpUtility.UrlEncode(name));
    sb.Append("=");
    sb.Append(HttpUtility.UrlEncode(value));
}