CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#multithreadingasynchronousparallel-processingwebclient
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Reputation: 85

How to fetch API data using WebClient and multiple threads?

So I am trying to query an API that's accessible via HTTP ( no authorization ). To speed things up, I tried to use a Parallel.ForEach loop but it seems like the longer it runs, the more errors pop up.

It fails to retrieve more and more requests. I know the API provider isn't limiting me because I can request the very same blocked URLs in my Internet browser. Also, these are different failed URLs each time, so it doesn't seem to be the case of malformed requests.

The error doesn't seem to occur while I use single threaded foreach loop.

My malfunctioning loop is below:

Parallel.ForEach(this.urlArray, singleUrl => {
this.apiResponseBlob = new System.Net.WebClient ().DownloadString(singleUrl );
this.responsesDictionary.Add(singleUrl, apiResponseBlob);
}

Normal foreach loop works fine but is very slow:

foreach (string singleUrl in this.urlArray) {
this.apiResponseBlob = new System.Net.WebClient ().DownloadString(singleUrl);
this.responsesDictionary.Add(singleUrl, apiResponseBlob);
}

Also: I've had a solution in PHP - I spawned several "fetchers" simultaneously and it never hung up. It seems strange to me that PHP would handle multithreaded retrieval better than C# so I must obviously miss something.

How do I query the API fastest way? Without these strange failures?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 2970

Answers (1)

Bjego
Bjego

Reputation: 683

Hi did you try to speed up your code with a sync downloads like in this question (see marked answer):

DownloadStringAsync wait for request completion

your could loop through your uris and get a callback for each successfull download.

EDIT : i have seen that you use 

this.apiResponseBlob = DL

when you use multithreading every thread tries to write in that variable. This could be a reason vor your bug. Try using an instance of that object type or use 

lock{}

so that only one thread can write this variable at time. http://msdn.microsoft.com/de-de/library/c5kehkcz.aspx

like

    Parallel.ForEach(this.urlArray, singleUrl => {
    var apiResponseBlob = new System.Net.WebClient ().DownloadString(singleUrl );
    lock(singleUrl.ToString()){
    this.responsesDictionary.Add(singleUrl, apiResponseBlob);
}
    }

Upvotes: 2

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