Question

I’m doing simple request with WebRequest and the app just hangs until the response comes back. How do I fix this?

I have read a lot of topics and they all say to use threads. I don’t know how to use them; can anyone provide an example of the following that doesn’t hang the user interface?

private string SimpleRequest(String url)
{
    WebRequest request = WebRequest.Create(url);
    WebResponse response = request.GetResponse();
    Stream stream = response.GetResponseStream();
    StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(stream);
    string result = reader.ReadToEnd();
    stream.Dispose();
    reader.Dispose();
    return result;
}

private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    String googleHtml = simpleRequest("https://facebook.com");
}

Thanks!

Answer 1

You can use a BackgroundWorker in order to use another thread than UI thread. Here is a sample.

You can also cancel or display progress:

public partial class fmMain : Form
{
    private void btnrunBackgroundWorker_Click( object sender, EventArgs e )
    {
        // Create a background worker
        BackgroundWorker bw = new BackgroundWorker();
        bw.DoWork += new DoWorkEventHandler( bw_DoWork );

        // run in another thread
        bw.RunWorkerAsync();     
    }

    private void bw_DoWork( object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e )
    {
        String facebookHtml = simpleRequest("https://facebook.com");
    }
}