Why use HttpClient for Synchronous Connection

Question

I am building a class library to interact with an API. I need to call the API and process the XML response. I can see the benefits of using HttpClient for Asynchronous connectivity, but what I am doing is purely synchronous, so I cannot see any significant benefit over using HttpWebRequest.

If anyone can shed any light I would greatly appreciate it. I am not one for using new technology for the sake of it.

Answer 1

For anyone coming across this now, .NET 5.0 has added a synchronous Send method to HttpClient. https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/pull/34948

The merits as to why where discussed at length here: https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/issues/32125

You can therefore use this instead of SendAsync. For example

public string GetValue()
{
    var client = new HttpClient();
            
    var webRequest = new HttpRequestMessage(HttpMethod.Post, "http://your-api.com")
    {
        Content = new StringContent("{ 'some': 'value' }", Encoding.UTF8, "application/json")
    };

    var response = client.Send(webRequest);

    using var reader = new StreamReader(response.Content.ReadAsStream());
            
    return reader.ReadToEnd();
}

This code is just a simplified example - it's not production ready.