Download source code - 10.7 KB

Silverlight and Silverlight for Windows Phone offer a great way of simplifying HTTP GET requests: WebClient class. WebClient encapsulates the primary logic of the HttpWebRequest and HttpWebResponse classes in order to receive GET data. These classes are completely transparent in most common scenarios. All the hard work is done by a WebClient object:

WebClient proxy = new WebClient();
proxy.DownloadStringCompleted += (sender, e) =>
{
    if (e.Error == null)
    {
        //Process the result...
        string data = e.Result;
    }
};
proxy.DownloadStringAsync(new Uri("http://address.com/service", UriKind.Absolute));

But how about HTTP POST requests? POST requests are critical because most mobile applications communicate via Web Services. Until today, we had to handle the HttpWebRequest and HttpWebResponse classes ourselves in order to acquire the desired data.

Not any more!

PostClient

I have just released PostClient, an easy-to-use, thread-safe library which works similarly to WebClient! Have a look:

Dictionary<string, object> parameters = new Dictionary<string, object>();
parameters.Add("name", "Vangos");
parameters.Add("age", 23);

PostClient proxy = new PostClient(parameters);
proxy.DownloadStringCompleted += (sender, e) =>
{
    if (e.Error == null)
    {
        //Process the result...
        string data = e.Result;
    }
};
proxy.DownloadStringAsync(new Uri("http://address.com/service", UriKind.Absolute));

Quite simple, huh? No HttpWebRequests, no HttpWebResponses! You only need to create a Dictionary of key-value pairs and pass it as a parameter to the PostClient's constructor. PostClient will then asynchronously download a string containing the web service data.

Download PostClient binaries and source code.

PostClient is an Open-Source library hosted in CodePlex and licensed under Microsoft Public License (MS-PL). You are free to use it in your applications by simply mentioning its origin. If you want to contribute for further development, do not hesitate to contact me.

Credits

Credits to Vish Uma for his great blog post considering asynchronous POST requests in Silverlight.

An HTTP POST Client for Windows Phone 7