Do HttpClient and HttpClientHandler have to be disposed between requests?

Question

System.Net.Http.HttpClient and System.Net.Http.HttpClientHandler in .NET Framework 4.5 implement IDisposable (via System.Net.Http.HttpMessageInvoker).

The usin

Answer 1

Since it doesn't appear that anyone has mentioned it here yet, the new best way to manage HttpClient and HttpClientHandler in .NET Core 2.1 is using HttpClientFactory.

It solves most of the aforementioned issues and gotchas in a clean and easy-to-use way. From Steve Gordon's great blog post:

Add the following packages to your .Net Core (2.1.1 or later) project:

Microsoft.AspNetCore.All
Microsoft.Extensions.Http

Add this to Startup.cs:

services.AddHttpClient();

Inject and use:

[Route("api/[controller]")]
public class ValuesController : Controller
{
    private readonly IHttpClientFactory _httpClientFactory;

    public ValuesController(IHttpClientFactory httpClientFactory)
    {
        _httpClientFactory = httpClientFactory;
    }

    [HttpGet]
    public async Task Get()
    {
        var client = _httpClientFactory.CreateClient();
        var result = await client.GetStringAsync("http://www.google.com");
        return Ok(result);
    }
}

Explore the series of posts in Steve's blog for lots more features.