CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#.net
Joe
Joe

Reputation: 83

HttpWebRequest Content Length Error

When downloading a file with HttpWebResponse the content length sent by the server is wrong and causes the HttpWebResponse to stop downloading the file mid-way through. IE seems to not have this issue when you browse. Any idea on how to get HttpWebResponse to ignore the content length the sever sent or would that even make sense. Any help that could be given would be greatly appreciated.

--Example

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("http://localhost:59771/Default.aspx");
        HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();

        Console.WriteLine("Content length: " + response.ContentLength);

        int bytesRead = 0;
        long totalBytesRead = 0;

        byte[] data = new byte[1024 * 64];
        StringBuilder output = new StringBuilder();

        Stream responseStream = response.GetResponseStream();

        do
        {
            bytesRead = responseStream.Read(data, 0, 1024 * 64);
            totalBytesRead += bytesRead;

            output.Append(Encoding.ASCII.GetString(data, 0, bytesRead));
        }
        while (bytesRead > 0);

        Console.WriteLine("total read: " + totalBytesRead);
        Console.WriteLine("last content read: " + output.ToString());
    }

    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
       Response.Clear();
       Response.ClearHeaders();
       Response.AddHeader("Content-Length", "13");
       Response.Write("ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ");
    }
}

Problem SOLVED!

The server we are pulling the data down from is a Cognos server and it was calculating the content length as if the string was to be compressed, but we were not sending in the code to state we could accept compression, so it would send back uncompressed data but only to the length of the compression. IE did not have this issue as it stated it could accept compression. Code to correct issue:

request2.Headers.Add("Accept-Encoding", "gzip,deflate");

Upvotes: 4

Views: 4972

Answers (2)

Joe
Joe

Reputation: 83

Problem SOLVED!

The server we are pulling the data down from is a Cognos server and it was calculating the content length as if the string was to be compressed, but we were not sending in the code to state we could accept compression, so it would send back uncompressed data but only to the length of the compression. IE did not have this issue as it stated it could accept compression. Code to correct issue:

 request2.Headers.Add("Accept-Encoding", "gzip,deflate");

Upvotes: 3

MerickOWA
MerickOWA

Reputation: 7592

HttpWebRequest has nothing to do with data sent from the server, only with the data you send, so I'll assume you meant HttpWebResponse.

HttpWebResponse don't care at all about the Content-Length sent by the server, it only provides it in the Headers property to the client for informational purposes.

You shouldn't rely on the server's content length when reading from the response stream, just keep reading until the Stream.Read method returns 0.

Upvotes: 0

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