Question

I am testing some features of WebClient class and I decided to see how DownloadProgressChanged works so I made up such code:

static void Main(string[] args)
{
  WebClient client = new WebClient();
  client.Proxy = null;
  client.BaseAddress = "ftp://ftp.xxxxxxx.com";
  CredentialCache cache = new CredentialCache();
  NetworkCredential credential = new NetworkCredential("userxxx", "passxxxx");
  client.Credentials = credential;
  client.DownloadProgressChanged += new DownloadProgressChangedEventHandler(client_DownloadProgressChanged);
  Uri remoteFile;
  Uri.TryCreate("/public_html/folderxxxx/Pictures/Product/Resized/1.jpg", System.UriKind.Relative, out remoteFile);

  client.DownloadFileAsync(remoteFile, "1.jpg");
  System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("1.jpg");
  Console.ReadLine();
}

static void client_DownloadProgressChanged(object sender, DownloadProgressChangedEventArgs e)
{
  Console.WriteLine(e.ProgressPercentage.ToString());
}

When I run this application, this is what I see as progress:

Looks nothing fancy. Ben Albahari suggest using new Thread instead of using Async method and this event handler is useful when you actually use Async method.

So how can I show Progress truly?

EDIT:

According to MSDN this should be done:

A passive FTP file transfer will always show a progress percentage of
zero, since the server did not send the file size. To show progress,
you can change the FTP connection to active by overriding the
GetWebRequest virtual method:

Sample Code:

   internal class MyWebClient:WebClient{
        protected override WebRequest GetWebRequest(Uri address) {
            FtpWebRequest req = (FtpWebRequest)base.GetWebRequest(address);
            req.UsePassive = false;
            return req;
        }
    }

Which is what I did but the same problem happens:

Answer 1

From MSDN:

A passive FTP file transfer will always show a progress percentage of zero, since the server did not send the file size. To show progress, you can change the FTP connection to active by overriding the GetWebRequest virtual method.

Source