Network stream doesn't receive all data

Question

I am using network stream to send a command to a server and receive data back. For some reason I don't receive all the data back. I tried to keep the connection open in an infinite loop and see that on the next iteration the data is received. Also weirdly when I DON'T USE PORT 80 network stream behaves fine and receives the data properly.

Here is my receive function.

    public static string SendRecieveString(string hostname, int port, string message, bool stripHeaderFromRespose = true)
    {
        //Printer.print("TCP Socket: Attempting Connection to server: " + hostname + "@" + port + " with header: " + message, PrintingSeverities.Info);
        //using (WebClient client = new WebClient())
        //{
        //    Printer.print("Send/Recieve communicating with header: " + "http://" + hostname + message + ":" + port, PrintingSeverities.Debug);
        //    string htmlCode = client.DownloadString("http://" + hostname + message + ":" + port);
        //    Printer.print("Raw Page: \n " + htmlCode, PrintingSeverities.Debug);
        //    return htmlCode;
        //}
        #region v1
        try
        {
            string page = String.Empty;
            using (TcpClient clientHandler = new TcpClient(hostname, port))
            {
                if (clientHandler.Connected) { 
                using (NetworkStream clientStream = clientHandler.GetStream())
                {
                    if (!clientStream.CanRead || !clientStream.CanWrite)
                    {
                        Printer.print("TCP Socket: Stream cannont preform read/write", PrintingSeverities.Warning);
                        throw new Exception("TCP Socket: Stream cannont preform read/write");
                    }
                    Byte[] bytes2send = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(message);
                    clientStream.Write(bytes2send, 0, bytes2send.Length);
                    do
                    {
                        Byte[] bytesReceived = new Byte[clientHandler.ReceiveBufferSize];
                        int streamReceived = clientStream.Read(bytesReceived, 0, bytesReceived.Length);
                        page += Encoding.ASCII.GetString(bytesReceived, 0, streamReceived);
                        Printer.print("Stream size: " + streamReceived);
                    } while (clientStream.DataAvailable);
                    Printer.print("Raw Page: " + page, PrintingSeverities.Debug);
                }
                if (stripHeaderFromRespose)
                {
                    string HTTPHeaderDelimiter = "\r\n\r\n";
                    if (page.IndexOf("HTTP/1.1 200 OK") > -1)
                        page = page.Substring(page.IndexOf(HTTPHeaderDelimiter) + HTTPHeaderDelimiter.Length);
                }
                }
                else
                {
                    Printer.print("TCP Socket: Could not connect to server", PrintingSeverities.Warning);
                    throw new Exception("TCP Socket: Could not connect to server");
                }
            }
            Printer.print("TCP Socket: Returning Page: " + page, PrintingSeverities.Debug);

            return page;
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            throw ex;
        }
        #endregion

I am receiving this: Raw Page: HTTP/1.1 200 OK Cache-control: no-store Content-type: text/xml Content-length: 399

[End] --> While I should receive: Raw Page:

  HTTP/1.1 200 OK 
  Cache-control: no-store 
  Content-type: text/xml 
  Content-length: 399


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <datavalues><relay1state>0</relay1state><relay2state>1</relay2state><reboot1state>0</reboot1state><reboot2state>0</reboot2state><failures1>0</failures1><failures2>0</failures2><rbtAttempts1>0</rbtAttempts1><rbtAttempts2>0</rbtAttempts2><totalreboots1>0</totalreboots1><totalreboots2>0</totalreboots2><serialNumber>00:0C:C8:02:B9:92</serialNumber></datavalues>"

Answer 1

Update #10! :)

It looks like another thread agrees with my assessment below. See this StackOverFlow post for additional info.

---

The issue appears to be that you're checking if data is available from an async source. (In other words, the answer could be "not yet".)

Solutions:

1. Use the WebClient library to do the work for you:

   var webClient = new WebClient();
   string readHtml = webClient.DownloadString(hostname);

2. Staying with the method you original presented, try reading via

   • async mechanism via the TCPClient class.
   • StreamReader ReadToEnd (lacks buffering so you're forced to pull the entire dataset into a pre-defined byte array.
   • or utilize the total expected dataset size to determine if you're done, and have the thread sleep between buffer reads.