How to send http request in asp.net without waiting for a response and without tying up resources

Question

In an ASP.Net application, I need to send some data (urlEncodedUserInput) via http POST to an external server in response to user input, without holding up the page response

Answer 1

I think Threadpool.QueueUserWorkItem is what you're looking for. With the addition of lambdas and anonymous types, this can be really simple:

var request = new { url = externalServerUrl, input = urlEncodedUserInput };
ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(
    (data) =>
    {
         httpRequest = WebRequest.Create(data.url);

         httpRequest.Method = "POST";
         httpRequest.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded;charset=utf-8";

         bytedata = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(data.input);
         httpRequest.ContentLength = bytedata.Length;

         requestStream = httpRequest.GetRequestStream();
         requestStream.Write(bytedata, 0, bytedata.Length);
         requestStream.Close();
         //and so on
     }, request);