How to generalize login, action, and logout when using Web API HttpClient

Question

I am using HttpClient (aka Web API client) to consume RESTfull services. Services require session to be established (via login) and then destroyed (via logout) upon each operation. So the call to consume service A looks something like this (pseudocode)

// setup
create auth dictionary authDict
create authenticationContent using FormUrlEndodeContent(authDict)
create cookieContainer
create HttpClientHandler...
create HttpClient

// login
await httpClient.PostAsync(LoginUrl, authenticationContent);
do error checking

// perform Operation A
await httpClient.....post...or...get...
extract data, process it, tranform it, get a cup of coffee, etc, etc
populate OperationAResult

// logout
await httpClient.GetAsync(LogoutUrl);

// return result
return OperationAResult

My question is, how can I easily reuse setup, login, and logout for different operations? Should I be creating some method that will take in Action<> and if so how do I make sure that operations occur in order?

Answer 1

Probably the easiest way is to just write a wrapper class.

public class MyHttpClient
{
  private HttpClient _client = new HttpClient();
  private MyHttpClientSetup _setup;

  public MyHttpClient(MyHttpClientSetup setup)
  {
    this._setup = setup;
  }

  private void HttpLogin() 
  { 
    // .. custom login stuff that uses this._setup
  }     

  private void HttpLogout() 
  { 
    // .. custom logout stuff that uses this._setup
  }     

  public void Reset()
  {
    this._client = new HttpClient();
  }

  // Wrapped Properties from the private HttpClient (1 example)
  public Uri BaseAddress 
  { 
    get{ return this._client.BaseAddress;} 
    set{ this._client.BaseAddress = value;} 
  }

  // Wrapped HttpMethods (1 example)
  // Extremely poorly written, should be delegated properly
  // This is just a bad example not using Task properly
  public Task<HttpResponseMessage> DeleteAsync(string requestUri)
  {
    this.HttpLogin();
    Task<HttpResponseMessage> result = this._client.DeleteAsync(requestUri);
    this.HttpLogout();
    return result;
  }


  public class MyHttpClientSetup
  {
    // Properties required for setup;
  }
}