Question

I am using C# and a console app and I am using this script to download files from a remote server. There area a couple of things I want to add. First, when it writes to a file, it doesn’t take into consideration a newline. This seems to run a certain amount of bytes and then goes to a newline. I would like it to keep the same format as the file it is reading from. Second, there are multiple .jpg files on the server that I need to download. How can I use this script to download multiple, .jpg files

public static int DownLoadFiles(String remoteUrl, String localFile)     {         int bytesProcessed = 0;          // Assign values to these objects here so that they can         // be referenced in the finally block         StreamReader remoteStream = null;         StreamWriter localStream = null;         WebResponse response = null;          // Use a try/catch/finally block as both the WebRequest and Stream         // classes throw exceptions upon error         try         {             // Create a request for the specified remote file name             WebRequest request = WebRequest.Create(remoteUrl);             request.PreAuthenticate = true;             NetworkCredential credentials = new NetworkCredential('id', 'pass');             request.Credentials = credentials;              if (request != null)             {                 // Send the request to the server and retrieve the                 // WebResponse object                 response = request.GetResponse();                 if (response != null)                 {                     // Once the WebResponse object has been retrieved,                     // get the stream object associated with the response's data                     remoteStream = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream());                      // Create the local file                     localStream = new StreamWriter(File.Create(localFile));                      // Allocate a 1k buffer                     char[] buffer = new char[1024];                     int bytesRead;                      // Simple do/while loop to read from stream until                     // no bytes are returned                     do                     {                         // Read data (up to 1k) from the stream                         bytesRead = remoteStream.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);                          // Write the data to the local file                         localStream.WriteLine(buffer, 0, bytesRead);                          // Increment total bytes processed                         bytesProcessed += bytesRead;                     } while (bytesRead > 0);                 }             }         }         catch (Exception e)         {             Console.WriteLine(e.Message);         }         finally         {             // Close the response and streams objects here             // to make sure they're closed even if an exception             // is thrown at some point             if (response != null) response.Close();             if (remoteStream != null) remoteStream.Close();             if (localStream != null) localStream.Close();         }          // Return total bytes processed to caller.         return bytesProcessed; 

Answer 1

Why don’t you use WebClient.DownloadData or WebClient.DownloadFile instead?

WebClient client = new WebClient(); client.Credentials = new NetworkCredentials('id', 'pass'); client.DownloadFile(remoteUrl, localFile); 

By the way the correct way to copy a stream to another is not what you did. You shouldn’t read into char[] at all, as you might run into encoding and end of line issues as you are downloading a binary file. The WriteLine method call is problematic too. The right way to copy contents of a stream to another is:

void CopyStream(Stream destination, Stream source) {    int count;    byte[] buffer = new byte[BUFFER_SIZE];    while( (count = source.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length)) > 0)        destination.Write(buffer, 0, count); } 

The WebClient class is much easier to use and I suggest using that instead.