WebRequest.GetResponse() is throwing error 401: Unauthorized

Question

I have an ASP.NET application where I'm trying to output the previously-visited local aspx page to html (its a report and I want to store a static html copy of it as an archive). I store the uri of the local page with:

Session["SummaryURI"] = Request.Url.AbsoluteUri;

and then in the next page I retrieve it with:

string url = Session["SummaryURI"].ToString();

url = url.Replace("static=false", "static=true");
//MessageLabel.Text = url;

//CREATE THE NEW FILE
WebRequest req = WebRequest.Create(url);
WebResponse res = req.GetResponse();

The part req.GetResponse() is where I'm getting my error (401 Unauthorized).

Do I need to configure something in IIS to allow this?

Do I need to edit file permissions or something?

Thanks for your help

By the way this works fine on my local IIS but not on my test server.

Answer 1

If you cannot enable Anonymous Authentication, try adding this to your WebRequest:

req.UseDefaultCredentials = true;
req.PreAuthenticate = true;
req.Credentials = CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;

Answer 2

I think the issue is because authentication on the test IIS server. Two options:

1) Enable "Anonymous Authentication" for the Site on test IIS Server.

2) (Recommended) Before making the request to test server use the code template below with right username/password/domain information that can be authenticated against the test server.

System.Net.NetworkCredential netCredential = 
        new System.Net.NetworkCredential("<USER_NAME>", "<PASSWORD>", "<DOMAIN>");
req.Credentials = netCredential;