Using WebClient in C# is there a way to get the URL of a site after being redirected?

Question

Using the WebClient class I can get the title of a website easily enough:

WebClient x = new WebClient();    
string source = x.DownloadString(s);
string titl         


        

Answer 1

In case you are only interested in the redirect URI you can use this code:

public static string GetRedirectUrl(string url)
{
     HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest) HttpWebRequest.Create(url);
     request.AllowAutoRedirect = false;

     using (HttpWebResponse response = HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse())
     {
         return response.Headers["Location"];
     }
}

The method will return

• null - in case of no redirect
• a relative url - in case of a redirect

Please note: The using statement (or a final response.close()) is essential. See MSDN Library for details. Otherwise you may run out of connections or get a timeout when executing this code multiple times.