Question

This may be a pathetically simple problem, but I cannot seem to format the post webrequest/response to get data from the Wikipedia API. I have posted my code below if anyone can help me see my problem.

    string pgTitle = txtPageTitle.Text;      Uri address = new Uri('http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php');      HttpWebRequest request = WebRequest.Create(address) as HttpWebRequest;      request.Method = 'POST';     request.ContentType = 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded';      string action = 'query';     string query = pgTitle;      StringBuilder data = new StringBuilder();     data.Append('action=' + HttpUtility.UrlEncode(action));     data.Append('&query=' + HttpUtility.UrlEncode(query));      byte[] byteData = UTF8Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(data.ToString());      request.ContentLength = byteData.Length;      using (Stream postStream = request.GetRequestStream())     {         postStream.Write(byteData, 0, byteData.Length);     }      using (HttpWebResponse response = request.GetResponse() as HttpWebResponse)     {         // Get the response stream.         StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream());          divWikiData.InnerText = reader.ReadToEnd();     } 

Answer 1

You might want to try a GET request first because it’s a little simpler (you will only need to POST for wikipedia login). For example, try to simulate this request:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=images&titles=Main%20Page

Here’s the code:

HttpWebRequest myRequest =   (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create('http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=images&titles=Main%20Page'); using (HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)myRequest.GetResponse()) {     string ResponseText;     using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream()))     {         ResponseText = reader.ReadToEnd();     } } 

Edit: The other problem he was experiencing on the POST request was, The exception is : The remote server returned an error: (417) Expectation failed. It can be solved by setting:

System.Net.ServicePointManager.Expect100Continue = false; 

(This is from: HTTP POST Returns Error: 417 "Expectation Failed.")