Reading the contents of a web page is easy in C# with the System.Net.WebClient class:

using System.Net;
using System.Windows.Forms;

string url = "http://www.devtopics.com";
string result = null;

try
{
    WebClient client = new WebClient();
    result = client.DownloadString( url );
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
    // handle error
    MessageBox.Show( ex.Message );
}

The web page is read into the ‘result’ string. Note the URL you pass to the DownloadString method must have the http:// prefix, otherwise it will throw a WebException.

A more complicated but also more flexible solution is to use the System.Net.HttpWebRequest class, which enables you to interact directly with servers using HTTP:

using System.Net;
using System.IO;
using System.Windows.Forms;

string result = null;
string url = "http://www.devtopics.com";
WebResponse response = null;
StreamReader reader = null;

try
{
    HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create( url );
    request.Method = "GET";
    response = request.GetResponse();
    reader = new StreamReader( response.GetResponseStream(), Encoding.UTF8 );
    result = reader.ReadToEnd();
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
    // handle error
    MessageBox.Show( ex.Message );
}
finally
{
    if (reader != null)
        reader.Close();
    if (response != null)
        response.Close();
}

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • LinkedIn
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Slashdot