How do I set an HTTP Web Request's body data?

Question

I'm creating a web request in ASP.NET and I need to add a bunch of data to the body. How do I do that?

var request = HttpWebRequest.Create(targetURL);
request.Method = "PUT";
response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();

Answer 1

With HttpWebRequest.GetRequestStream

Code example from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/d4cek6cc.aspx

string postData = "firstone=" + inputData;
ASCIIEncoding encoding = new ASCIIEncoding ();
byte[] byte1 = encoding.GetBytes (postData);

// Set the content type of the data being posted.
myHttpWebRequest.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";

// Set the content length of the string being posted.
myHttpWebRequest.ContentLength = byte1.Length;

Stream newStream = myHttpWebRequest.GetRequestStream ();

newStream.Write (byte1, 0, byte1.Length);

From one of my own code:

var request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(uri);
request.Credentials = this.credentials;
request.Method = method;
request.ContentType = "application/atom+xml;type=entry";
using (Stream requestStream = request.GetRequestStream())
using (var xmlWriter = XmlWriter.Create(requestStream, new XmlWriterSettings() { Indent = true, NewLineHandling = NewLineHandling.Entitize, }))
{
    cmisAtomEntry.WriteXml(xmlWriter);
}

try 
{    
    return (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();  
}
catch (WebException wex)
{
    var httpResponse = wex.Response as HttpWebResponse;
    if (httpResponse != null)
    {
        throw new ApplicationException(string.Format(
            "Remote server call {0} {1} resulted in a http error {2} {3}.",
            method,
            uri,
            httpResponse.StatusCode,
            httpResponse.StatusDescription), wex);
    }
    else
    {
        throw new ApplicationException(string.Format(
            "Remote server call {0} {1} resulted in an error.",
            method,
            uri), wex);
    }
}
catch (Exception)
{
    throw;
}