Auto-generating a WebRequest - rest

Question

I am trying to consume a binary stream from a ServiceStack service, as described here:
How to consume a file with a ServiceStack client
I realize that I must use a custom WebClient, since I want direct access to the response stream. However, I would still like to avoid making this client by hand. Instead, I'd like to write something like,
var webClient = new JsonServiceClient(baseUrl)
.ConfigureWebClient(new MyRequestDto { Foo = "bar" }));
This way, I wouldn't have to assemble the URL and query string by hand; and when I change my request DTO, I wouldn't have to remember to change my custom WebClient setup code, either.
Is there a way to accomplish this, somehow ? I've looked at ServiceClientBase.PrepareWebRequest(...), and it does a whole lot of useful stuff that I don't feel like copy/pasting into my own code. I'd love to inherit ServiceClientBase and call that method directly, but it's private, so I can't. Anyone got any other ideas ?

Answer 1

All of ServiceStack's C# Service Clients have both a Global and a Local Request Filter allowing you to initialise the Request and Global and Local Response Filters allowing fine-grained access to the returned HttpWebResponse.
Initializing the WebRequest of all ServiceClients using a Global Request Filter:
ServiceClientBase.HttpWebRequestFilter = httpReq => ConfigureWebClient(httpReq);
Using the Local Request Filter:
var client = new JsonServiceClient(baseUrl) {
LocalHttpWebRequestFilter = httpReq => ConfigureWebClient(httpReq)
};
Although if you just want the binary response All Service Clients allow you to specify either a string, byte[], Stream or HttpWebResponse as your Generic Response type and it will return what was requested. See the Service Client wiki page for more examples of these.
Here's how you can retrieve binary responses:
byte[] responseBytes = client.Get<byte[]>("/poco/World");
var dto = responseBytes.FromUtf8Bytes().FromJson<PocoResponse>();
Or with a Stream:
using (Stream responseStream = client.Get<Stream>("/poco/World")) {
var dto = responseStream.ReadFully().FromUtf8Bytes().FromJson<PocoResponse>();
}
Or from the underlying HttpWebResponse:
HttpWebResponse webResponse = client.Get<HttpWebResponse>("/poco/World");
using (var stream = webResponse.GetResponseStream())
using (var sr = new StreamReader(stream)) {
var dto = sr.ReadToEnd().FromJson<PocoResponse>();
}
You can change Open Source Software, you don't have to work around it
ServiceStack is Open Source software, there's no need to look for hacks or try to work around something that's not accessible or not available, make a pull-request to change what you want and if it's a valid request for a common use-case it will likely be accepted. Otherwise feel free to take a fork of the Source code and customize it as you wish.