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> dotnet's HttpClient is... fine. Yes, and it's in the standard library (System namespace). Being Microsoft they've if anything over-featured it.

by pjc50 8mo ago

xnorswap 8mo ago
It's fine but it's sharp-edged, in that it's recommended to use IHttpClientFactory to avoid the dual problem of socket exhaustion ( if creating/destroying lots of HttpClients ) versus DNS caching outliving DNS ( if using a very long-lived singleton HttpClient ). And while this article [1] says "It's been around for a while", it was only added in .NET Framework 4.5, which shows it took a while for the API to stabilise. There were other ways to make web requests before that of course, and also part of the standard library, and it's never been "difficult" to do so, but there is a history prior to HttpClient of changing ways to do requests. For modern dotnet however it's all pretty much a solved problem, and there's only ever been HttpClient and a fairly consistent story of how to use it. [1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/extensions/httpclient-factory https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/extensions/htt...
- pixl97 8mo ago
  >"It's been around for a while" is 14 years not a while?
  - xnorswap 8mo ago
    It is, but it's also a decade after the language was first released.
    - Kwpolska 8mo ago
      Python’s urllib2 (now urllib.request) started out in the year 2000 [0]. .NET’s WebRequest was available in .NET Framework 1.1 in 2003 [1]. But since then, Microsoft noticed the issues with WebRequest and came up with HttpClient in 2012. It has some issues and footguns, like those related to HttpClient lifetime, but it’s a solid library. On the other hand, the requests library for Python started in 2011 [2], but the stdlib library hasn’t seen many improvements. [0] https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/6d7e47b8ea1b8cf82927dacc364689b8eeb8708b/Lib/urllib2.py https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/6d7e47b8ea1b8cf82927d... [1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.net.webrequest?view=netframework-1.1 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.net.webr... [2] https://github.com/psf/requests/blob/main/HISTORY.md#001-2011-02-13 https://github.com/psf/requests/blob/main/HISTORY.md#001-201...

> dotnet's HttpClient is... fine. Yes, and it's in the standard library (System namespace). Being Microsoft they've if anything over-featured it.

by pjc50 8mo ago

> dotnet's HttpClient is... fine. Yes, and it's in the standard library (System namespace). Being Microsoft they've if anything over-featured it.

xnorswap 8mo ago

It's fine but it's sharp-edged, in that it's recommended to use IHttpClientFactory to avoid the dual problem of socket exhaustion ( if creating/destroying lots of HttpClients ) versus DNS caching outliving DNS ( if using a very long-lived singleton HttpClient ). And while this article [1] says "It's been around for a while", it was only added in .NET Framework 4.5, which shows it took a while for the API to stabilise. There were other ways to make web requests before that of course, and also part of the standard library, and it's never been "difficult" to do so, but there is a history prior to HttpClient of changing ways to do requests. For modern dotnet however it's all pretty much a solved problem, and there's only ever been HttpClient and a fairly consistent story of how to use it. [1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/extensions/httpclient-factory https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/extensions/htt...

pixl97 8mo ago
>"It's been around for a while" is 14 years not a while?
- xnorswap 8mo ago
  It is, but it's also a decade after the language was first released.
  - Kwpolska 8mo ago
    Python’s urllib2 (now urllib.request) started out in the year 2000 [0]. .NET’s WebRequest was available in .NET Framework 1.1 in 2003 [1]. But since then, Microsoft noticed the issues with WebRequest and came up with HttpClient in 2012. It has some issues and footguns, like those related to HttpClient lifetime, but it’s a solid library. On the other hand, the requests library for Python started in 2011 [2], but the stdlib library hasn’t seen many improvements. [0] https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/6d7e47b8ea1b8cf82927dacc364689b8eeb8708b/Lib/urllib2.py https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/6d7e47b8ea1b8cf82927d... [1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.net.webrequest?view=netframework-1.1 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.net.webr... [2] https://github.com/psf/requests/blob/main/HISTORY.md#001-2011-02-13 https://github.com/psf/requests/blob/main/HISTORY.md#001-201...