CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#pdfwebclient
Dean.DePue
Dean.DePue

Reputation: 1013

Trouble Downloading PDF with WebClient

We have a process which accesses an external API to obtain and download a PDF file. Here is the process:

using (var client = new WebClient())
{
    client.BaseAddress = add;
    client.Encoding = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8;
    client.Headers[HttpRequestHeader.ContentType] = "application/pdf";
    client.Headers.Add(HttpRequestHeader.Authorization, "Basic ");
    JObject jobject = generateReportPDFRequest(report.ReportID);
    //string tst = jobject.ToString();
    string result = client.UploadString(add, "POST", jobject.ToString());
    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(result))
    {
        retval = AddReportPDF(reportid, Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(result));
    }
}

public static JObject generateReportPDFRequest(string reportid)
{
    try
    {
        // create the object
        JObject jsonRequest = new JObject();
        // add version property
        jsonRequest.Add("version", "1.0");
        // add content object
        JObject content = new JObject();
        JObject repid = new JObject();
        content.Add("customer-report-id", @"" + reportid + @"");
        content.Add("content-type", "application/pdf");
        JObject reportRequest = new JObject();
        jsonRequest.Add("content", content);
        return jsonRequest;
    }
    catch (Exception e)
    {
        string mess = e.Message;
    }
    return null;
}

I'm trying to get the PDF with the Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(result) process which is return with the WebClient upload string post. The stream is converted to a byte array and saved into the database. But the file is empty.

I had one person tell me that I am saving the file as version 1.6 and what is downloaded is version 1.4. If that is the problem, how do I define the PDF version? If not, how do I get these PDF files properly?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 2202

Answers (1)

rene
rene

Reputation: 42414

Don't use UploadString if you don't want a string to be returned. There is a proper overload UploadData that returns you an byte[] array. That prevents the risk of any encoding/decoding mishaps.

adapt your code as follows:

using (var client = new WebClient())
{
    client.BaseAddress = add;
    client.Headers[HttpRequestHeader.ContentType] = "application/pdf";
    client.Headers.Add(HttpRequestHeader.Authorization, "Basic ");
    JObject jobject = generateReportPDFRequest(report.ReportID);

    byte[] result = client.UploadData(
                        add, 
                        "POST", 
                        Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(jobject.ToString()));

    retval = AddReportPDF(reportid, result);
}

Upvotes: 1

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