http get request and xml response

Question

Hello,

My form sends an http get request, i need to  get a response in string

I'm actually getting a string, but in strange symbols, i guess because the response is in xml

here's my code in vb.net

 Dim sURL As String
 sURL = "http://web.mirsms.ru/public/http/?user=xxx&pass=xxx&action=inbox"
 Dim wrGETURL As WebRequest
 wrGETURL = WebRequest.Create(sURL)

 Dim myProxy As New WebProxy("myproxy", 80)
 myProxy.BypassProxyOnLocal = True

 'wrGETURL.Proxy = myProxy
 'wrGETURL.Proxy = WebProxy.GetDefaultProxy()

 Dim objStream As Stream
 objStream = wrGETURL.GetResponse.GetResponseStream()

 Dim objReader As New StreamReader(objStream)
 Dim sLine As String = ""
 Dim i As Integer = 0

 Do While Not sLine Is Nothing
    i += 1
    sLine = objReader.ReadLine
    If Not sLine Is Nothing Then
		MsgBox(sLine)
    End If
 Loop

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Hi,

I feel you can use XMLReader to get the stream out. But just wondering it that XML or HTML ???

Anyways, below are few good stuff to read and solve your problem.

1. XML Read
2. XMLTextReader

I hope this should resolve your issue.

Cheers!

Answer 2

Thanks a lot for Your answer! As far as i understand i'm sending a http request and getting a xml response(or am i wrong?)

i actually tried somthing like this:

Dim sURL As String
        
        sURL = "http://web.mirsms.ru/public/http/?user=xxxx&pass=xxxxx&action=inbox"
        Dim wrGETURL As WebRequest
        wrGETURL = WebRequest.Create(sURL)

        Dim myProxy As New WebProxy("myproxy", 80)
        myProxy.BypassProxyOnLocal = True

        'wrGETURL.Proxy = myProxy
        'wrGETURL.Proxy = WebProxy.GetDefaultProxy()

        Dim objStream As Stream
        objStream = wrGETURL.GetResponse.GetResponseStream()

        Dim objReader As New Xml.XmlTextReader(objStream)
        Dim sLine As String = ""
        Dim i As Integer = 0

        objReader.MoveToContent()
        ' Parse the file and display each of the nodes.
        While objReader.Read()
            Select Case objReader.NodeType
                Case Xml.XmlNodeType.Element
                    Console.Write("<{0}>", objReader.Name)
                Case Xml.XmlNodeType.Text
                    Console.Write(objReader.Value)
                Case Xml.XmlNodeType.CDATA
                    Console.Write("<![CDATA[{0}]]>", objReader.Value)
                Case Xml.XmlNodeType.ProcessingInstruction
                    Console.Write("<?{0} {1}?>", objReader.Name, objReader.Value)
                Case Xml.XmlNodeType.Comment
                    Console.Write("<!--{0}-->", objReader.Value)
                Case Xml.XmlNodeType.XmlDeclaration
                    Console.Write("<?xml version='1.0'?>")
                Case Xml.XmlNodeType.Document
                Case Xml.XmlNodeType.DocumentType
                    Console.Write("<!DOCTYPE {0} [{1}]", objReader.Name, objReader.Value)
                Case Xml.XmlNodeType.EntityReference
                    Console.Write(objReader.Name)
                Case Xml.XmlNodeType.EndElement
                    Console.Write("</{0}>", objReader.Name)
            End Select
        End While

and always got a '' hexadecimal value  0x1F, is an invalid character   string 1 position 1 error on 

objReader.MoveToContent()

i'm kinda new to this theme and its quite hard to understand

Answer 3

0x1F is a Ctrl-_ character in position 1 (or is it 2) of you input file.  Check your input and verify that there are no invalide characters present.

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Answer 4

I went to that website with your URL and received this

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
-<output> <RECEIVER DATE_REPORT="10.12.2012 19:15:19" AGT_ID=""/> -<errors><error code="-20107">Ошибка авторизации xxx</error></errors></output>

although when I use your code to get the response I just get a couple of strange characters.

---

You've taught me everything I know but not everything you know.

Answer 5

Hi Hollow82,

1. Generally this kind of errors are due to XSL format specially in the first line. If you are using XSL, check the xsl to make sure that there is no space in the first position of line 1.  Otherwise, paste the complete XSL file here.

2. You can use HttpUtility.HtmlEncode for your strings which you are getting response.

Refer more for HttpUtility.HtmlEncode

Remark from MSDN on this kind of issues :

If characters such as blanks and punctuation are passed in an HTTP stream, they might be misinterpreted at the receiving end. HTML encoding converts characters that are not allowed in HTML into character-entity equivalents; HTML decoding reverses the encoding. For example, when embedded in a block of text, the characters < and > are encoded as &lt; and &gt; for HTTP transmission.

Cheers!

Answer 6

If i make the same request

http://web.mirsms.ru/public/http/?user=xxxx&pass=xxxxx&action=inbox

in google chrome browser

i get this in response 

<output>

<RECEIVER AGT_ID="" DATE_REPORT="10.12.2012 19:18:43"/>

<errors>

<error code="-20107">Ошибка авторизации xxxx</error>

</errors>

</output>

(It's an authorization error cause i don't wanna display my pass and login, but still it's a normal response...)

so the browser understands a response and xmlTextReader finds an error in the xml response?

Answer 7

Strange... 

The actions that are performed by this http request(checking the sms inbox, sending sms) are working from my code but i really need to see the response...

Answer 8

Hi Hollow,

Welcome to the MSDN forum.

There is a specific forum to deal with the network issue. For better support, I will move this thread to Network Class Library (System.Net) forum. It will cost a little time to involve the members in this forum. I appreciate your patience.

Sorry for any incontinence and have a nice day.

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MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us
Develop and promote your apps in Windows Store
Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help.

Answer 9

Finally i found out, that the webresponse was actually compressed with gZip.

This 0x1f at the very beginning was a sign, that a webresponse is compressed(found this information in the internet).

Here's the working code in vb.net (in case somebody'll have the same problem)

Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
        Dim UrlDataRequest As String
        Dim Request As System.Net.HttpWebRequest
        Dim Response As System.Net.WebResponse
        Dim Stream As System.IO.Stream
        Dim UserAgent As String
        UrlDataRequest = "http://web.mirsms.ru/public/http/?user=23276.1&pass=xxx&action=post_sms&message=hello&target=89817477417"
        UserAgent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.11 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/23.0.1271.17 Safari/537.11"
        'Download data
        Dim StringStreamReader As System.IO.StreamReader
        Dim aString As String
        Try
            Request = System.Net.WebRequest.Create(UrlDataRequest)
            Request.AutomaticDecompression = System.Net.DecompressionMethods.Deflate Or System.Net.DecompressionMethods.GZip
            Request.Headers.Add("Accept-Encoding", "gzip,deflate")
            Request.UserAgent = UserAgent
            Response = Request.GetResponse()
            Stream = Response.GetResponseStream()
            StringStreamReader = New StreamReader(Stream)
            aString = StringStreamReader.ReadToEnd.ToString
            MsgBox(aString)' finally i've got what i needed
        Catch ex As System.Net.WebException
            Throw ex
        End Try
    End Sub

Thanks everybody for the answers anyway. :)