Question

Given a URL A which gets redirected to a 3rd party website B, in my application I need to to find out URL B for the given url A and insert it in DB , this can be a windows application or web or whichever way is faster and easier using C#!
Thanks !

P.S. I do not require the code to insert in DB.

Answer 1

WebRequest follows redirects without user intervention, so if the redirects are using 301/302 status codes then the following will work

WebRequest request = WebRequest.Create(destination);
WebResponse response = request.GetResponse();
Console.WriteLine(response.ResponseUri);

If the redirects are created using javascript or HTTP-Equiv meta tags then you’re doing to have to parse the page and look for those. The HTML agility pack is probably the best way to do this.

To take this a little further the following is a class which will manually resolve the main HTTP redirect status codes, building up a history as it goes

/// <summary>
/// Digs through HTTP redirects until a non-redirected URL is found.
/// </summary>
public class Digger
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Initializes a new instance of the <see cref="Digger"/> class.
    /// </summary>
    public Digger() : this(20)
    {            
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Initializes a new instance of the <see cref="Digger"/> class.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="maximumDepth">The maximum depth of redirects to parse.</param>
    public Digger(int maximumDepth)
    {
        this.MaximumDepth = maximumDepth;
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Gets the maximum depth of redirects to parse.
    /// </summary>
    /// <value>The maximum depth of redirects to parse.</value>
    public int MaximumDepth
    {
        get; 
        private set;
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Resolves any redirects at the specified URI.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="destination">The initial URI.</param>
    /// <returns>The URI after resolving any HTTP redirects.</returns>
    public Uri Resolve(Uri destination)
    {
        List<Uri> redirectHistory = new List<Uri>();
        return this.Resolve(destination, redirectHistory);
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Resolves any redirects at the specified URI.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="destination">The initial URI.</param>
    /// <param name="redirectHistory">A collection of <see cref="Uri"/> objects representing the redirect history.</param>
    /// <returns>The URI after resolving any HTTP redirects.</returns>
    public Uri Resolve(Uri destination, ICollection<Uri> redirectHistory)
    {
        redirectHistory.Add(destination);
        return this.Resolve(destination, this.MaximumDepth, redirectHistory);
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Resolves any redirects at the specified URI.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="destination">The initial URI.</param>
    /// <param name="hopsLeft">The maximum number of redirects left to follow.</param>
    /// <param name="redirectHistory">A collection of <see cref="Uri"/> objects representing the redirect history.</param>
    /// <returns>The URI after resolving any HTTP redirects.</returns>
    private Uri Resolve(Uri destination, int hopsLeft, ICollection<Uri> redirectHistory)
    {
        HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(destination);
        request.AllowAutoRedirect = false;
        request.Method = "HEAD";

        HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();

        Uri resolvedUri;

        if (response.StatusCode == HttpStatusCode.Redirect || 
            response.StatusCode == HttpStatusCode.Moved || 
            response.StatusCode == HttpStatusCode.MovedPermanently)
        {
            if (hopsLeft > 0)
            {
                Uri redirectUri = new Uri(response.GetResponseHeader("Location"));
                if (redirectHistory.Contains(redirectUri))
                {
                    throw new Exception("Recursive redirection found");
                }

                redirectHistory.Add(redirectUri);
                resolvedUri = this.Resolve(redirectUri, hopsLeft - 1, redirectHistory);
            }
            else
            {
                throw new Exception("Maximum redirect depth reached");
            }
        }
        else
        {
            resolvedUri = response.ResponseUri;
        }

        return resolvedUri;            
    }
}