System.Net.Request Class for HTTPS

PKI Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples - Version 2.10, by Dr. Herong Yang

PKI Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

∟.NET Programs Communicating with HTTPS Servers

∟System.Net.Request Class for HTTPS

This section describes the System.Net.Request class in .NET Framework 4 that allows you to communicate with HTTPS Web servers.

If you want to write your own C# program to communicate with an HTTPS Web server, .NET Framework 4 has built-in support for HTTP Transport Security and Public Key Infrastructure.

The easiest way to communicate with a Web server is to use the System.Net.Request class. Here is a C# test program that uses the System.Net.Request class to get a Web page from an HTTP server or an HTTPS server:

// WebReader.cs
// Copyright (c) 2011, HerongYang.com, All Rights Reserved.
using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Text;
using System.Net;
public class WebReader {
   public static void Main(string[] args) {
      string url = args[0];
      WebRequest req = WebRequest.Create(url);
      WebResponse res = req.GetResponse();
      StreamReader web 
         = new StreamReader(res.GetResponseStream(), Encoding.UTF8);
      string line;
      while ((line = web.ReadLine()) != null)
         Console.WriteLine(line);
   }
}

For the first test, I want to run this C# program to connect a normal HTTP server, http://www.yahoo.com:

C:\herong>\windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\csc WebReader.cs

Microsoft (R) Visual C# 2010 Compiler version 4.0.30319.1
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\herong>WebReader.exe http://www.yahoo.com

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en-US" class="y-fp-bg y-fp-pg-grad  bkt701">
<!-- m2 template 0 -->
<head>
  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">

  <title>Yahoo!</title>
  <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge,chrome=1">
...

The output confirms that my test C# program, WebReader.java, works fine on HTTP servers.

Now let's run this program to connect the yahoo login HTTPS server, which we have used in previous tutorials with Internet Explorer and Firefox Web browsers.

C:\herong>WebReader.exe https://login.yahoo.com

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html class="no-js">
<head>
    <title>Yahoo - login</title>
    <meta http-equav="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8">
    <meta name="referrer" content="origin">
    <meta name="viewport" content="initial-scale=1, maximum-scale=1, ...
    ...

Cool. The output confirms that the System.Net.WebRequest class automatically does extra security tasks required by the HTTPS communication.

Last update: 2011.

Table of Contents

About This Book

Introduction of PKI (Public Key Infrastructure)

Introduction of HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure)

Using HTTPS with Google Chrome

Using HTTPS with Mozilla Firefox

HTTPS with IE (Internet Explorer)

Perl Scripts Communicating with HTTPS Servers

PHP Scripts Communicating with HTTPS Servers

Java Programs Communicating with HTTPS Servers