asked on

View Actual Response Stream of a HttpWebRequest

I am working with System.Net.HttpWebRequest objects and would like to see the actual response stream.

The catch - our servers require SSL - so intercepting does not work as we see the response, but it is encrypted.

I have tried the following:

using (StreamReader streamReader = new StreamReader(request.GetResponse()))
{
Response.Write(streamReader.ReadToEnd());
}

The result is:
https://myserver.com/exchange/mrichmon/Calendar/testappointment.emlHTTP/1.1 200 OK

However if I have code similar to this:

using(XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create(request.GetResponseStream()))
{
      reader.MoveToContent();
      while(reader.Read())
      {
            if(reader.NodeType == XmlNodeType.Element)
            {
                  Response.Write("<" + reader.Name + "><br>");
                  Response.Write(reader.ReadElementString());
            }
      }
}

Then I get results like this:
<a:response>
https://myserver.com/exchange/mrichmon/Calendar/testappointment.eml<a:propstat>
HTTP/1.1 200 OK<a:contentclass>
<c:subject>
<d:location>
<d:dtend>
<d:busystatus>
<d:alldayevent>
<d:reminderoffset>

So I know there actually is xml content there.

So, the question is how do I view the actual response so that I can look at the xml, see the defined namespaces, see the fields returned, etc.

Also related is what is the best way to get this xml from teh stream into a variable that can be used in C# code

RoninThe

personally I prefer Read() to ReadToEnd(), nothing to do with your question here though. The problem seems to do with GetResponse() and GetResponseStream().
try this-

string respString = "";
using( StreamReader readStream = new StreamReader( request.GetResponseStream(), System.Text.Encoding.GetEncoding("utf-8"))
{
      Char[] read = new Char[256];
      int count = readStream.Read( read, 0, 256 );
      while (count > 0)
      {
            // Dump the 256 characters on a string.
            String str = new String(read, 0, count);
            respString += str;
            count = readStream.Read(read, 0, 256);
      }
}
Console.Write( respString);
if( respString != "")
{
      XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
      try
      {
            doc.LoadXml( respString);
      }
      catch( XmlException e)
      {
      }
}

mrichmon

ASKER

No that does not work.

Instead the output is the exact same as
using (StreamReader streamReader = new StreamReader(request.GetResponse()))
{
Response.Write(streamReader.ReadToEnd());
}

which is https://myserver.com/exchange/mrichmon/Calendar/testappointment.emlHTTP/1.1 200 OK

mrichmon

ASKER

Okay I figured it out.

Very simple solution - I am suprised no one mentioned it.

The problem was that since the output was going through a Response.Write - it was in the source, but only the above text was being displayed to the screen.

Simple huh :o)

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

GhostMod

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