Question

Although i can grasp the concepts of the .Net framework and windows apps, i want to create an app that will involve me simulating website clicks and getting data/response times from that page. I have not had any experience with web yet as im only a junior, could someone explain to me (in english!!) the basic concepts or with examples, the different ways and classes that could help me communicate with a website?

Answer 1

what do you want to do?

send a request and grab the response in a String so you can process?

HttpWebRequest and HttpWebResponse will work

if you need to connect through TCP/IP, FTP or other than HTTP then you need to use a more generic method

WebRequest and WebResponse

All the 4 methods above are in System.Net Namespace

If you want to build a Service in the web side that you can consume, then today and in .NET please choose and work with WCF (RESTfull style).

hope it helps you finding your way 🙂

as an example using the HttpWebRequest and HttpWebResponse, maybe some code will help you understand better.

case: send a response to a URL and get the response, it’s like clicking in the URL and grab all the HTML code that will be there after the click:

private void btnSendRequest_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) {     textBox1.Text = '';     try     {         String queryString = 'user=myUser&pwd=myPassword&tel=[phone]&msg=My message';         byte[] requestByte = Encoding.Default.GetBytes(queryString);          // build our request         WebRequest webRequest = WebRequest.Create('http://www.sendFreeSMS.com/');         webRequest.Method = 'POST';         webRequest.ContentType = 'application/xml';         webRequest.ContentLength = requestByte.Length;          // create our stram to send         Stream webDataStream = webRequest.GetRequestStream();         webDataStream.Write(requestByte, 0, requestByte.Length);          // get the response from our stream         WebResponse webResponse = webRequest.GetResponse();         webDataStream = webResponse.GetResponseStream();          // convert the result into a String         StreamReader webResponseSReader = new StreamReader(webDataStream);         String responseFromServer = webResponseSReader.ReadToEnd().Replace('\n', '').Replace('\t', '');          // close everything         webResponseSReader.Close();         webResponse.Close();         webDataStream.Close();          // You now have the HTML in the responseFromServer variable, use it :)         textBox1.Text = responseFromServer;     }     catch (Exception ex)     {         textBox1.Text = ex.Message;     } } 

The code does not work cause the URL is fictitious, but you get the idea. 🙂