WebResponse to HttpResponseBase. Is it possible?

Question

Hi,

In a controller action, I am manually sending a form to a remote URL using WebRequest. I successfully receive a WebResponse containing an html page to display. I would like to "paste" this response as the Response (of type HttpResponseBase) of the action. An action normally returns an ActionResult, so how do I conclude my controller action so that the WebResponse will be the result?

Note: the Url in the browser must also become the url of the response.

Update: Here is the goal. This is on a paypal checkout page. Instead of having a form with all cart hidden fields and a checkout submit button in my view, I would like a simple checkout button linked to one of my actions. In this action, I will prepare the WebRequest with the form and send it to paypal. Doing this in an action also allows me to store the inactivated order in a DB table so that when the order confirmation comes I can compare it with the stored order and activate it.

Solution: thanks to those who answered for pointing out that this would not be possible to redirect with a POST. It appears that I am not obliged to redirect to paypal with a POST. Instead I can construct a URL with all the cart data in the query string and redirect to it. Doing it from a controller action method still allows me to store the pending order in a database.

Thanks

Answer 1

If you just want the content of the WebRequest response to be sent back in the response from your controller action, you could do something like this in your action method:

WebRequest req = WebRequest.Create("http://www.google.com");
WebResponse res = req.GetResponse();
StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(res.GetResponseStream());

ContentResult cr = new ContentResult();
cr.Content = sr.ReadToEnd();

return cr;

this is even more concise:

WebRequest req = WebRequest.Create("http://www.google.com");
WebResponse res = req.GetResponse();

FileStreamResult fsr = new FileStreamResult(res.GetResponseStream(),res.ContentType);

return fsr;

Answer 2

THere is no direct way to do this. I dont know much about ASp.NET. ARe you saying that your ASP.net page is doing a HTTP request to a remote site, and getting back a response, and you want that response to become a HTTPResponseBase? What do you want to do with it after that?

See the following SO thread on a similar topic... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1183124/how-do-i-mock-httpresponsebase-end