C#: Downloading a URL with timeout

Question

What's the best way to do it in .NET? I always forget what I need to Dispose() (or wrap with using).

EDIT: after a long time using WebRequest, I found out about customizing WebClient. Much better.

Answer 1

Following Thomas Levesque's comment here, there's a simpler and more generic solution.

We create a WebClient subclass with timeout support, and we get all of WebClient's goodness.

public class WebClientWithTimeout : WebClient
{
  private readonly int timeoutMilliseconds;
  public WebClientWithTimeout(int timeoutMilliseconds)
  {
    this.timeoutMilliseconds = timeoutMilliseconds;
  }

  protected override WebRequest GetWebRequest(Uri address)
  {
    var result = base.GetWebRequest(address);
    result.Timeout = timeoutMilliseconds;
    return result;
  }
}

Sample usage:

public string GetRequest(Uri uri, int timeoutMilliseconds)
{
  using (var client = new WebClientWithTimeout(timeoutMilliseconds))
  {
    return client.DownloadString();
  }
}