CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#web-servicesdotnet-httpclient
gotta go fast
gotta go fast

Reputation: 75

C# IHttpHandler and the use of httpclient for a web service

I have been tasked with maintaining an C# web service that pretty much boils down to the following code that is used in conjunction with IIS 8:

public class Handler1 : IHttpHandler
{
    public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context) 
    {
    // here we process the request and return it after fetching some data
    }
}

Now I need to create another web service, which in turn will request another web service for fetching data. What I've gathered is that the HttpClient() in C# is the new shiny, however finding out how to implement it in my case is not so easy (or if that would be a good solution).

My solution would something like

public class Handler1 : IHttpHandler
{
    public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context) 
    {
    // make sure that the incoming request is valid
    HttpClient client = new HttpClient();
    // do stuff with ^client and request the other service
    [..]
    // return the data from the response from ^client to the first request
    }
}

Am I on the right track or would this be a catastrophe? I would gladly take tips or pointers to relevant documentation.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1327

Answers (2)

Edouard Paumier
Edouard Paumier

Reputation: 26

There are two issues with your approach.

First, as others have said, HttpClient must not be created for each request, as this would result in your server creating one new TCP connection for each request and not dispose it from your connection pool until they reach their MaxIdleTimeout.

This is because each instance of HttpClient (or rather, each instance of HttpClientHandler) creates a unique ConnectionGroup within the ConnectionPool, so two HttpClient (created in such a way) will not share the same connections.

You can quite easily exhaust your ports (because connections are kept alive for quite some time), and even without that, you'll have all the performance issues you might find when deactivating keepalive (typically when connecting on a HTTPs server).

As for a solution, you might add a private readonly HttpClient field in your handler that you would initialize as you've done in your code (I believe HttpHandlers are instanciated once by IIS, not per-request, as long as it says it's reusable). (Edit: note that HttpClient instances are thread-safe).

The other problem you'll find is that IHttpHandler are synchronous by design. This means you'll have to return task.Result in your code. This will block the current thread (let's call it A), and all subsequent processing of the outbound request (sending the body of the request, reading the header of the response and reading the body of the response) will spawn use a thread from the thread pool to process this (let's call them B, C, and D, though they can all be the same thread since no step overlap in time).

But in Asp.net, you cannot safely do that. When your main thread A is processing an Asp.net inbound request, it will, simply put, lock the current context. And when threads B, C and D will be spawn to process the outbound request, they too, will try to acquire and lock the current context. But because your main thread A is blocked, the context has not been released. This will effectively result in deadlocks (A locks the context and wait for B/C/D, B/C/D wait for the context).

To work around this, I would advise you to use instead a IHttpAsyncHandler. Async process are not made to be used synchronous, and HttpClient can only be used in an async way.

However, this might prove much more challenging for a first usage scenario. It would be much more easier to use a HttpClient from the context of a WebApi server. However, without any knowledge as to why you have to use a HttpHandler, I do not know if this would be in the realm of acceptable answers.

There are other way to run asynchronous tasks and wait synchronously for them (such as changing temporary the CurrentContext), but they're all very dangerous.

As a side note, HttpClient is the new shiny thing, and works quite well with other new shiny things such as "all-the-way async infrastructure". But trying to use it HttpClient in an older infrastructure is not as easy.

Upvotes: 1

FailedUnitTest
FailedUnitTest

Reputation: 1800

Better solution example:

public class YourApp
{
    private static HttpClient Client = new HttpClient();
    public static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Requests about to start!");
        for(int i = 0; i < 5; i++)
        {
            var result = Client.GetAsync("http://www.stackoverflow.com").Result;
            Console.WriteLine(result);
        }
        Console.WriteLine("Requests are finished!");
        Console.ReadLine();
    }
}

Upvotes: 0

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