How to access the HTTP request body using RestSharp?

Question

I'm building a RESTful API client in C# .NET 3.5.

I first started building it with the good old HttpWebClient (and HttpWebResponse ), I could do whatever I wanted with. I were happy. The only thing I was stuck on was the automatic deserialization from JSON response.

So, I've heard about a wonderful library called RestSharp (104.1) which eases the development of RESTful API clients, and automatically deserialize JSON and XML responses. I switched all my code on it, but now I realize I can't do things I could do with HttpWebClient and HttpWebResponse , like access and edit the raw request body.

Anyone has a solution ?

Edit : I know how to set the request body (with request.AddBody() ), my problem is that I want to get this request body string , edit it, and re-set it in the request (updating the request body on the fly)

Answer 1

The request body is a type of parameter. To add one, you can do one of these...

req.AddBody(body);
req.AddBody(body, xmlNamespace);
req.AddParameter("text/xml", body, ParameterType.RequestBody);
req.AddParameter("application/json", body, ParameterType.RequestBody);

To retrieve the body parameter you can look for items in the req.Parameters collection where the Type is equal to ParameterType.RequestBody .

See code for the RestRequest class here .

Here is what the RestSharp docs on ParameterType.RequestBody has to say:

If this parameter is set, it's value will be sent as the body of the request. The name of the Parameter is ignored, and so are additional RequestBody Parameters – only 1 is accepted.

RequestBody only works on POST or PUT Requests, as only they actually send a body.

If you have GetOrPost parameters as well, they will overwrite the RequestBody – RestSharp will not combine them but it will instead throw the RequestBody parameter away.

For reading/updating the body parameter on-the-fly, you can try:

var body = req.Parameters.FirstOrDefault(p => p.Type == ParameterType.RequestBody);
if (body != null)
{
    Console.WriteLine("CurrentBody={0}", body.Value);
    body.Value = "NewBodyValue";
}

Or failing that, create a new copy of the RestRequest object with a different body.