Uncompressing gzip response from WebClient

Question

Is there a quick way to uncompress gzip response downloaded with WebClient.DownloadString() method? Do you have any suggestions on how to handle gzip responses with WebClient?

Answer 1

The easiest way to do this is to use the built in automatic decompression with the HttpWebRequest class.

var request = (HttpWebRequest)HttpWebRequest.Create("http://stackoverflow.com"); request.Headers.Add(HttpRequestHeader.AcceptEncoding, "gzip,deflate"); request.AutomaticDecompression = DecompressionMethods.GZip | DecompressionMethods.Deflate; 

To do this with a WebClient you have to make your own class derived from WebClient and override the GetWebRequest() method.

public class GZipWebClient : WebClient {     protected override WebRequest GetWebRequest(Uri address)     {         HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)base.GetWebRequest(address);         request.AutomaticDecompression = DecompressionMethods.GZip | DecompressionMethods.Deflate;         return request;     } } 

Also see this SO thread: Does .NET's HttpWebResponse uncompress automatically GZiped and Deflated responses?