Sending WebDAV Requests in .NET

Earlier today one of my coworkers, John Bocharov, asked me if I had ever done any WebDAV coding in .NET - specifically sending PUT and DELETE requests. I replied that I had, but it had been several months ago, and each time that I had written any WebDAV-related code samples it was for a specific purpose and not very exhaustive. Just the same, I promised John that if I found any of my old code samples I would send them to him. After a bit of searching through my archives I was able to find enough code snippets to throw together a quick sample for PUT and DELETE that John could use, but it made me start thinking about putting together a more complete sample by adding a few extra WebDAV methods, thereby creating a better example to keep around.

With that in mind, the code sample in this blog post shows how to send several of the most-common WebDAV requests using C# and common .NET libraries. There’s a bit of intentional redundancies in each section of the sample - I did this because I was trying to make each section somewhat self-sufficient so you can copy and paste a little easier. I present the WebDAV methods the in the following order:

That wraps up the section descriptions, and with that taken care of - here is the code sample:

using System;
using System.Net;
using System.IO;
using System.Text;

class WebDavTest
{
   static void Main(string[] args)
   {
      try
      {
         // Define the URLs.
         string szURL1 = @"http://localhost/foobar1.txt";
         string szURL2 = @"http://localhost/foobar2.txt";
         string szURL3 = @"http://localhost/foobar3";

         // Some sample text to put in text file.
         string szContent = String.Format(
            @"Date/Time: {0} {1}",
            DateTime.Now.ToShortDateString(),
            DateTime.Now.ToLongTimeString());

         // Define username and password strings.
         string szUsername = @"username";
         string szPassword = @"password";

         // --------------- PUT REQUEST --------------- //

         // Create an HTTP request for the URL.
         HttpWebRequest httpPutRequest =
            (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(szURL1);

         // Set up new credentials.
         httpPutRequest.Credentials =
            new NetworkCredential(szUsername, szPassword);

         // Pre-authenticate the request.
         httpPutRequest.PreAuthenticate = true;

         // Define the HTTP method.
         httpPutRequest.Method = @"PUT";

         // Specify that overwriting the destination is allowed.
         httpPutRequest.Headers.Add(@"Overwrite", @"T");

         // Specify the content length.
         httpPutRequest.ContentLength = szContent.Length;

         // Optional, but allows for larger files.
         httpPutRequest.SendChunked = true;

         // Retrieve the request stream.
         Stream requestStream =
            httpPutRequest.GetRequestStream();

         // Write the string to the destination as a text file.
         requestStream.Write(
            Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes((string)szContent),
            0, szContent.Length);

         // Close the request stream.
         requestStream.Close();

         // Retrieve the response.
         HttpWebResponse httpPutResponse =
            (HttpWebResponse)httpPutRequest.GetResponse();

         // Write the response status to the console.
         Console.WriteLine(@"PUT Response: {0}",
            httpPutResponse.StatusDescription);

         // --------------- COPY REQUEST --------------- //

         // Create an HTTP request for the URL.
         HttpWebRequest httpCopyRequest =
            (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(szURL1);

         // Set up new credentials.
         httpCopyRequest.Credentials =
            new NetworkCredential(szUsername, szPassword);

         // Pre-authenticate the request.
         httpCopyRequest.PreAuthenticate = true;

         // Define the HTTP method.
         httpCopyRequest.Method = @"COPY";

         // Specify the destination URL.
         httpCopyRequest.Headers.Add(@"Destination", szURL2);

         // Specify that overwriting the destination is allowed.
         httpCopyRequest.Headers.Add(@"Overwrite", @"T");

         // Retrieve the response.
         HttpWebResponse httpCopyResponse =
            (HttpWebResponse)httpCopyRequest.GetResponse();

         // Write the response status to the console.
         Console.WriteLine(@"COPY Response: {0}",
            httpCopyResponse.StatusDescription);

         // --------------- MOVE REQUEST --------------- //

         // Create an HTTP request for the URL.
         HttpWebRequest httpMoveRequest =
            (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(szURL2);

         // Set up new credentials.
         httpMoveRequest.Credentials =
            new NetworkCredential(szUsername, szPassword);

         // Pre-authenticate the request.
         httpMoveRequest.PreAuthenticate = true;

         // Define the HTTP method.
         httpMoveRequest.Method = @"MOVE";

         // Specify the destination URL.
         httpMoveRequest.Headers.Add(@"Destination", szURL1);

         // Specify that overwriting the destination is allowed.
         httpMoveRequest.Headers.Add(@"Overwrite", @"T");

         // Retrieve the response.
         HttpWebResponse httpMoveResponse =
            (HttpWebResponse)httpMoveRequest.GetResponse();

         // Write the response status to the console.
         Console.WriteLine(@"MOVE Response: {0}",
            httpMoveResponse.StatusDescription);

         // --------------- GET REQUEST --------------- //

         // Create an HTTP request for the URL.
         HttpWebRequest httpGetRequest =
            (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(szURL1);

         // Set up new credentials.
         httpGetRequest.Credentials =
            new NetworkCredential(szUsername, szPassword);

         // Pre-authenticate the request.
         httpGetRequest.PreAuthenticate = true;

         // Define the HTTP method.
         httpGetRequest.Method = @"GET";

         // Specify the request for source code.
         httpGetRequest.Headers.Add(@"Translate", "F");

         // Retrieve the response.
         HttpWebResponse httpGetResponse =
            (HttpWebResponse)httpGetRequest.GetResponse();

         // Retrieve the response stream.
         Stream responseStream =
            httpGetResponse.GetResponseStream();

         // Retrieve the response length.
         long responseLength =
            httpGetResponse.ContentLength;

         // Create a stream reader for the response.
         StreamReader streamReader =
            new StreamReader(responseStream, Encoding.UTF8);

         // Write the response status to the console.
         Console.WriteLine(
            @"GET Response: {0}",
            httpGetResponse.StatusDescription);
         Console.WriteLine(
            @"  Response Length: {0}",
            responseLength);
         Console.WriteLine(
            @"  Response Text: {0}",
            streamReader.ReadToEnd());

         // Close the response streams.
         streamReader.Close();
         responseStream.Close();

         // --------------- DELETE REQUEST --------------- //

         // Create an HTTP request for the URL.
         HttpWebRequest httpDeleteFileRequest =
            (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(szURL1);

         // Set up new credentials.
         httpDeleteFileRequest.Credentials =
            new NetworkCredential(szUsername, szPassword);

         // Pre-authenticate the request.
         httpDeleteFileRequest.PreAuthenticate = true;

         // Define the HTTP method.
         httpDeleteFileRequest.Method = @"DELETE";

         // Retrieve the response.
         HttpWebResponse httpDeleteFileResponse =
            (HttpWebResponse)httpDeleteFileRequest.GetResponse();

         // Write the response status to the console.
         Console.WriteLine(@"DELETE Response: {0}",
            httpDeleteFileResponse.StatusDescription);

         // --------------- MKCOL REQUEST --------------- //

         // Create an HTTP request for the URL.
         HttpWebRequest httpMkColRequest =
            (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(szURL3);

         // Set up new credentials.
         httpMkColRequest.Credentials =
            new NetworkCredential(szUsername, szPassword);

         // Pre-authenticate the request.
         httpMkColRequest.PreAuthenticate = true;

         // Define the HTTP method.
         httpMkColRequest.Method = @"MKCOL";

         // Retrieve the response.
         HttpWebResponse httpMkColResponse =
            (HttpWebResponse)httpMkColRequest.GetResponse();

         // Write the response status to the console.
         Console.WriteLine(@"MKCOL Response: {0}",
            httpMkColResponse.StatusDescription);

         // --------------- DELETE REQUEST --------------- //

         // Create an HTTP request for the URL.
         HttpWebRequest httpDeleteFolderRequest =
            (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(szURL3);

         // Set up new credentials.
         httpDeleteFolderRequest.Credentials =
            new NetworkCredential(szUsername, szPassword);

         // Pre-authenticate the request.
         httpDeleteFolderRequest.PreAuthenticate = true;

         // Define the HTTP method.
         httpDeleteFolderRequest.Method = @"DELETE";

         // Retrieve the response.
         HttpWebResponse httpDeleteFolderResponse =
            (HttpWebResponse)httpDeleteFolderRequest.GetResponse();

         // Write the response status to the console.
         Console.WriteLine(@"DELETE Response: {0}",
            httpDeleteFolderResponse.StatusDescription);

      }
      catch (Exception ex)
      {
         Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);
      }
   }
}

When you run the code sample, if there are no errors you should see something like the following output:

PUT Response: Created COPY Response: Created MOVE Response: No Content GET Response: OK Response Length: 30 Response Text: Date/Time: 2/9/2010 7:21:46 PM DELETE Response: OK MKCOL Response: Created DELETE Response: OK Press any key to continue . . .

Since the code sample cleans up after itself, you should not see any files or folders on the destination server when it has completed executing. To see the files and folders actually created and deleted on the destination server, you can step through the code in a debugger.

Closing Notes

I should point out that I did not include examples of the WebDAV PROPPATCH/PROPFIND and LOCK/UNLOCK methods in this sample because they require processing the XML responses, and that was way outside the scope of what I had originally wanted to do with this sample. I might write a follow-up blog later that shows how to use those methods, but I’m not making any promises. ;-]

I hope this helps.