.NET Tips and Tricks

Blog archive

You're Using HttpClient Wrong

There's a very good chance that, every time you need to access a Web Service, you've been creating an HttpClient object and then throwing it away. Unfortunately, that's bad for your application because you can run out of WebSockets (yes, even if you call the object's Dispose method before discarding it). Though, I have to admit, you'll only have this problem if you use the HttpClient a lot. Still, it's a bad idea to keep creating and destroying it.

In the .NET Framework, the intent was for you to create the HttpClient once in your application and use it over and over. To do that you'll have to declare your HttpClient object as a global or static variable. That creates its own problems, of course.

In ASP.NET Core, however, you have a better option: the HttpClientFactory. The HttpClientFactory provides you with HttpClient objects but takes responsibility for managing the resources that the clients can use up. Think of it as "connection pooling for Web Services."

The first step in implementing this tactic is to create an HttpClientFactory object in your project's Startup class in the ConfigureServices method and add it to your application's services collection. All you need is this code (and, yes, I realize that the method's name doesn't do a good job of reflecting what it does):

services.AddHttpClient();

Then, in the constructor for any controller that needs an HttpClient, you can ask for the factory by its interface (IHttpClientFactory). This following example grabs the HttpClientFactory out of the services collection and stuffs it into a field to be used by the methods in the controller:

public class TodoListController: Controller
{
  public TodoListController(IHttpClientFactory factory, ... )
 {
  this.factory = factory;

Now, whenever you need an HttpClient object, you just get it from the factory's Create method, like this:

HttpClient hc = factory.CreateClient();

Posted by Peter Vogel on 09/12/2019


comments powered by Disqus

Featured

  • Azure Vibe Coding for the Enterprise Masses: Microsoft Partners with Replit

    Replit has partnered with Microsoft to bring its AI-powered, natural language coding platform to Azure, enabling enterprise workers to build and deploy software without writing code—marking a major step toward agentic, no-code application development at scale.

  • GitHub Copilot Swamps Gemini Code Assist, Amazon Q Among Engineers, AI Coding Survey Says

    GitHub Copilot tops a new AI coding survey, outpacing rivals as devs embrace tools, vibe coding, and productivity gains.

  • Agents Now Conduct 'Deep Research' in Azure AI Foundry Limited Preview

    Microsoft has brought OpenAI's Deep Research model to Azure AI Foundry, giving developers API and SDK access to autonomous research agents that gather, analyze, and report on web-scale data. Now in public preview, the capability powers enterprise workflows with reasoning-grade intelligence and programmable orchestration.

  • Linear Regression Using JavaScript

    Dr. James McCaffrey presents a complete end-to-end demonstration of linear regression using JavaScript. Linear regression is the simplest machine learning technique to predict a single numeric value, and a good way to establish baseline results for comparison with other more sophisticated regression techniques.

  • Creating Simple Chat Bots with Microsoft Fabric Datastores

    At Visual Studio Live! San Diego, Ginger Grant of Desert Isle Group will lead a practical, demo-driven session on how to build simple yet powerful chatbots using Microsoft Fabric lakehouses and warehouses. Attendees will learn how to use AI skills and grounding techniques to enable conversational data access -- quickly and cost-effectively. Ideal for developers ready to extend analytics with conversational interfaces.

Subscribe on YouTube