How to get page via TcpClient?

Question

I'm trying to send a GET request to a page via TCP stream. Here's what my code looks like: ``` public class SocketLevelWebClient { public string SendWebRequest(string url, string request) { using(TcpClient tc = new TcpClient()) { tc.Connect(url, 80); using (NetworkStream ns = tc.GetStream()) { using (System.IO.StreamWriter sw = new System.IO.StreamWriter(ns)) { using (System.IO.StreamReader sr = new System.IO.StreamReader(ns)) { sw.Write(request); sw.Flush(); return sr.ReadToEnd(); } } } } } ``` And the request itself: ``` SocketLevelWebClient wc = new SocketLevelWebClient(); var r=wc.SendWebRequest("www.youtube.com",@"GET http://www.youtube.com/ HTTP/1.1 Accept: application/x-ms-application, image/jpeg, application/xaml+xml, image/gif, image/pjpeg, application/x-ms-xbap, */* Accept-Language: en-US User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; .NET4.0C; .NET4.0E…

Accepted Answer

The problem is that `ReadToEnd` only returns when the stream has ended. Unfortunately, the server keeps the TCP connection alive. Therefore `ReadToEnd` can never detect that the true end has arrived.

Proof:

```
                        sw.Write(request);
                        sw.Flush();
                        var l = sr.ReadLine();
```

`l` is being filled with the first line of the request.

Remove the `keep-alive` header and add:

```
Connection: close
```

Or use the response `Content-Length` header to correctly read it (binary).

How to get page via TcpClient?

Solution

Problem