HttpWebRequest.GetResponse() keeps getting timed out

Question

i wrote a simple C# function to retrieve trade history from MtGox with following API call:

https://data.mtgox.com/api/1/BTCUSD/trades?since=
         


        

Answer 1

This is not a solution, but just an alternative: These days i almost only use WebClient instead of HttpWebRequest. Especially WebClient.UploadString for POST and PUT and WebClient.DownloadString. These simply take and return strings. This way i don't have to deal with streams objects, except when i get a WebException. i can also set the content type with WebClient.Headers["Content-type"] if necessary. The using statement also makes life easier by calling Dispose for me.

Rarely for performance, i set System.Net.ServicePointManager.DefaultConnectionLimit high and instead use HttpClient with it's Async methods for simultaneous calls.

This is how i would do it now

string GetTradesOnline(Int64 tid)
{
    using (var wc = new WebClient())
    {
        return wc.DownloadString("https://data.mtgox.com/api/1/BTCUSD/trades?since=" + tid.ToString());
    }
}

2 more POST examples

// POST
string SubmitData(string data)
{
    string response;
    using (var wc = new WebClient())
    {
        wc.Headers["Content-type"] = "text/plain";
        response = wc.UploadString("https://data.mtgox.com/api/1/BTCUSD/trades", "POST", data);
    }

    return response;
}

// POST: easily url encode multiple parameters
string SubmitForm(string project, string subject, string sender, string message)
{
    // url encoded query
    NameValueCollection query = HttpUtility.ParseQueryString(string.Empty);
    query.Add("project", project);
    query.Add("subject", subject);

    // url encoded data
    NameValueCollection data = HttpUtility.ParseQueryString(string.Empty);
    data.Add("sender", sender);
    data.Add("message", message);

    string response;
    using (var wc = new WebClient())
    {
        wc.Headers[HttpRequestHeader.ContentType] = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";
        response = wc.UploadString( "https://data.mtgox.com/api/1/BTCUSD/trades?"+query.ToString()
                                  , WebRequestMethods.Http.Post
                                  , data.ToString()
                                  );
    }

    return response;
}

Error handling

try
{
    Console.WriteLine(GetTradesOnline(0));

    string data = File.ReadAllText(@"C:\mydata.txt");
    Console.WriteLine(SubmitData(data));

    Console.WriteLine(SubmitForm("The Big Project", "Progress", "John Smith", "almost done"));
}
catch (WebException ex)
{
    string msg;
    if (ex.Response != null)
    {
        // read response HTTP body
        using (var sr = new StreamReader(ex.Response.GetResponseStream())) msg = sr.ReadToEnd();
    }
    else
    {
        msg = ex.Message;
    }

    Log(msg);
    throw; // re-throw without changing the stack trace
}