c# can an API return HttpWebResponse

Question

what I am trying to do -I guess- is use an API as a proxy. It worked with Fiddler and there was the idea.

I have a website and wish to show another into an iframe. But i need to remove the 'no-open' header to do that.

So the plan is: Sent a url string to the API from my site, the API makes a request to that url, gets the response, and without saving the page just changes a few headers and respond back to my website.

Problem: It keeps returning a json. I tried to return the html code as a string, but then my website will not render it into iframe.

This is my code.

 public class ProductsController : ApiController
{
    public HttpWebResponse GetProductsByCategory(string url, int edit)
    {            
        HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url);
        request.Method = WebRequestMethods.Http.Get;
        request.ContentType = "text/html";
        HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
        //
        if (edit == 1)
        {                              
            response.Headers.Set("Content-Disposition", "");
            response.Headers.Set("X-Download-Options", "");               
        }
        response.Headers.Set("Content-Type", "text/html");
        response.Headers.Set("APIflag", "Hi!");

        Stream theHTML = response.GetResponseStream();
        StreamReader objReader = new StreamReader(theHTML);
        string myHTML = objReader.ReadToEnd();

        System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine("url was: "+url); //is OK
        System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine("edit flag was: " +edit); //is OK
        System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(myHTML); //is OK

        return response;
    }
}

JohnPan · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-12 09:42:27Z

3

This way it worked

 public class ProductsController : ApiController
{      
    public HttpResponseMessage GetProductsByCategory(string url)
    {          
        HttpResponseMessage theResponse = null;
        // init a wep api Client
        var myClient = new HttpClient();
        var theTask = myClient.GetAsync(url).ContinueWith((lamdaObj) =>
        {
            theResponse = lamdaObj.Result;
        });
        // wait for task to complete. Not really async, is it?!
        theTask.Wait();
        // remove annoying header 
        theResponse.Content.Headers.Remove("Content-Disposition");
        return theResponse;
    }
}

}

answered Mar 12, 2013 at 9:42

JohnPan

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1 Comment

Vince Over a year ago

Much easier than what I was doing and include the "annoying header" as you put it, that I needed. Thank you!

Jras · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-08 18:31:22Z

0

You may want to look at the ASP.net web api. You could do this with the WCF HTTP stack located at http://wcf.codeplex.com/. It has been included in the ASP.net web api. http://www.asp.net/web-api

answered Mar 8, 2013 at 18:31

Jras

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