StreamingHTTPData

Streaming HTTP Data

Downloading HTML from the internet is a breeze with C#:

Parameters: string strURL - a url to the page you would like to download from: example: "www.google.com"

Return Value: returns the HTML data retrieved from the remote host

static string GetHTMLFromURL(string strURL)
{
    string retVal = "";

    try
    {

Create a new HttpWebRequest object. This object is used to download information from the internet.

        HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)HttpWebRequest.Create(strURL);

call the GetResponse() method to obtain a connection to the remote site:

        // execute the request
        HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)
            request.GetResponse();

Retrieve the data stream from the response object:

        // we will read data via the response stream
        Stream resStream = response.GetResponseStream();

Accumulate the data from the response stream:

        string tempString = null;
        int    count      = 0;

        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

        byte[]        buf = new byte[15000];

        do
        {

Fill a buffer with a segment of the stream.

           count = resStream.Read(buf, 0, buf.Length);

Make sure the stream was able to be read from.

            if (count != 0)
            {

Translate the byte[] data into an ASCII string

                tempString = Encoding.ASCII.GetString(buf, 0, count);

Append the results to a string buffer for optimal performance:

                sb.Append(tempString);
            }
        }
        while (count > 0); // any more data to read?

Get the data out of the string buffer and place it into the return value:

        retVal = sb.ToString();
    }
    catch(Exception)
    {
    }
    return retVal;
}

Thats all there is to it!