How to close a HttpWebResponse being returned from a method call

Question

I have a helper class with a method that is set up to take in information to make a HttpWebRequest. The method as it currently is, returns a HttpWebResponse.

HttpWebResponse httpResponse;
//make request here
httpResponse = (HttpWebResponse)httpReq.GetResponse();
return httpResponse;

Now this is causing issues because the connections are never being closed. Using the using statement or a close in the callee will destroy the object before it's returned. The right way to do this would be something like.

using (httpResp = (HttpWebResponse)httpReq.GetResponse())
{
    return GetDataFromResponse(httpResp);
}

But unfortunately there are many calls into the helper class that are expecting the response object back and then serialize the data in the caller's own way.

I tried doing this on the calls into the helper.

using(HttpWebResponse httpResponseRecieved = WebHelper.MakeRequest(parameters))

but this doesn't seem to close the response. Is httpResponseRecieved a different object than the one returned? Is there a better solution or will I have to rewrite the method and all of its callers?

Answer 1

As @JohnSaunders pointed out, the last using that is wrapped around the caller is closing the response.

So doing using(HttpWebResponse httpResponseRecieved = WebHelper.MakeRequest(parameters)) works after all.