How to read a file from internet?

Question

simple question: I have an file online (txt). How to read it and check if its there? (C#.net 2.0)

Answer 1

First, you can download the binary file:

public byte[] GetFileViaHttp(string url)
{
    using (WebClient client = new WebClient())
    {
        return client.DownloadData(url);
    }
}

Then you can make array of strings for text file (assuming UTF-8 and that it is a text file):

var result = GetFileViaHttp(@"http://example.com/index.html");
string str = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(result);
string[] strArr = str.Split(new[] { "\r\n" }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);

You'll receive every (except empty) line of text in every array field.

Answer 2

This is too much easier:

using System.Net;
using System.IO;

...

    using (WebClient client = new WebClient()) {
        //... client.options
        Stream stream = client.OpenRead("http://.........");
        using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(stream)) {
            string content = reader.ReadToEnd();
        }
    }

"WebClient" and "StreamReader" are disposables. The content of file will be into "content" var.

The client var contains several configuration options.

The default configuration could be called as:

string content = new WebClient().DownloadString("http://.........");

Answer 3

an alternative to HttpWebRequest is WebClient

    // create a new instance of WebClient
    WebClient client = new WebClient();

    // set the user agent to IE6
    client.Headers.Add("user-agent", "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.0.3705;)");
    try
    {
        // actually execute the GET request
        string ret = client.DownloadString("http://www.google.com/");

        // ret now contains the contents of the webpage
        Console.WriteLine("First 256 bytes of response: " + ret.Substring(0,265));
    }
    catch (WebException we)
    {
        // WebException.Status holds useful information
        Console.WriteLine(we.Message + "\n" + we.Status.ToString());
    }
    catch (NotSupportedException ne)
    {
        // other errors
        Console.WriteLine(ne.Message);
    }

example from http://www.daveamenta.com/2008-05/c-webclient-usage/

Answer 4

Look at System.Net.WebClient, the docs even have an example of retrieving the file.

But testing if the file exists implies asking for the file and catching the exception if it's not there.

Answer 5

I think the WebClient-class is appropriate for that:  

WebClient client = new WebClient();
Stream stream = client.OpenRead("http://yoururl/test.txt");
StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(stream);
String content = reader.ReadToEnd();

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.webclient.openread.aspx

Answer 6

A little bit easier way:

string fileContent = new WebClient().DownloadString("yourURL");