Cache And Compare Files In C#

Question

Ok, I'm trying to make an application for an online Radio Station.

I have it set to read the song title and artist and write it to a text file on the webserver.

I want to have the application store the text in a string or a cache, and then reread it every 15 seconds and if it isn't the same then update the info box.

Where the text is stored: http://xcastradio.com/stats/nowplaying.txt

I don't need it coded for me. I would just like to know how to store text in a string from a website.

Answer 1

See the example for System.Net.WebRequest.

Pulled from those docs (and modified for your applcation):

public String GetData(String url) {
    WebRequest request = WebRequest.Create(url);
    HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse) request.GetResponse();
    Stream dataStream = response.GetResponseStream();
    StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(dataStream);
    String data = reader.ReadToEnd();
    reader.Close();
    dataStream.Close();
    response.Close();
    return data;
}

Call it as:

String data = GetData("http://xcastradio.com/stats/nowplaying.txt");

Answer 2

Use an HttpWebRequest/HttpWebResponse, use GetResponseStream, read it until no more bytes can be read, and put that into a byte array.

After you have the string, you then open a FileStream to a local file, and write that byte array with the Write method.