HttpClient
is a new .NET 4.5 class using the HTTP protocol, similar to WebClient
or HttpWebRequest
. A highlight of this class is the full support of Async.
In fact it's not such a novelty, since we already had it on the REST Starter Kit and the implementation of the .NET 4.0 We API.
The HttpClient
class resides on the System.Net.Http
namespace, which is a brand new .NET 4.5 namespace. Basically, we use HttpClient
to create HTTP requests, manage the response, and process the response's content.
Some of the most interesting capabilities are:
Helper methods that create requests and process the responses
The possibility of defining a default header to apply to all sent messages
Timeout and cancellation management