You have three different choices for consuming REST APIs when working in the .Net Framework: WebClient, HttpClient, and HttpWebRequest. In this post we will look at these three ways we can access REST APIs from within the managed environment, i.e., without resorting to third-party libraries. In the sections that follow I will illustrate these approaches with relevant code examples to help you gain a better understanding of the concepts.

In a nutshell, WebRequest—in its HTTP-specific implementation, HttpWebRequest—represents the original way to consume HTTP requests in .Net Framework. WebClient provides a simple but limited wrapper around HttpWebRequest. And HttpClient is the new and improved way of doing HTTP requests and posts, having arrived with .Net Framework 4.5.

Let’s start our discussion with the WebRequest abstract class.

System.Net.WebRequest

The System.Net.WebRequest class is an abstract class. Thus you will need to create a HttpWebRequest or FileWebRequest to consume HTTP requests using this class. The following code snippet shows how you can work with WebRequest.