Question

Im getting a strange error sometimes on my httpwebrequests.

Error im getting:

ArgumentException was unhandled by user code
'' is not a supported encoding name.

Code i am running:

            try
        {
            HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url);

            request.Timeout = 3000;
            request.ReadWriteTimeout = 3000;
            request.Proxy = new WebProxy(p.ToString(), true);

            response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
            Encoding responseEncoding = Encoding.GetEncoding(response.CharacterSet);
            using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream(), responseEncoding))
            {
                if (response.StatusCode == HttpStatusCode.OK)
                {
                    // do stuff
                }
            }


        }
        catch (WebException wexc1)
        {
            if (wexc1.Status == WebExceptionStatus.ProtocolError)
            {
                return false;
            }

        }
        finally
        {
            if (response != null)
                response.Close();
        }

It doesent happend all the time its like 1 out of 500 requests. It feels like the code is unable to determine the actual encoding.. but how would i handle this?

The error currently makes the application crash

Answer 1

I assume that the exception is thrown in the line:

Encoding responseEncoding = Encoding.GetEncoding(response.CharacterSet);

As a quick advice I would suggest setting Encoding.UTF8 or response.ContentEncoding as the encoding of the stream and not relying on response.CharacterSet().

CharacterSet is a WebName (e.g. Encoding.UTF8.WebName), not a proper name of the encoding.