Any idea why this ASP.NET C# code to send http request is not working?

Question

Code is below, when I hit the page with:

http://ryan.local.testmode.com/timecrunch/bctimepost.ashx?project=2593059&person=2831215&date=04/16/2009&hours=2.5&case=555

it just sort of hangs with the loading bar moving slowly forever till I stop it, did I forget to do something? I can't figure out which line of code is used to actually 'submit' the request...

NOTE: username/password and [company name] are placeholders for sharing the code and contain the proper values in my running code

using System;
using System.Web;
using System.Xml;
using System.Net;
using System.IO;

public class bctimepost : IHttpHandler {

    public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context)
    {

        string project_id = context.Request.QueryString["project"];
        string person_id = context.Request.QueryString["person"];
        string post_date = context.Request.QueryString["date"];
        string post_hours = context.Request.QueryString["hours"];
        string case_num = context.Request.QueryString["case"];

        HttpWebRequest objRequest = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("https://[company name].updatelog.com/projects/" + project_id + "/time_entries.xml");

        objRequest.Method = "POST";
        objRequest.ContentType = "application/xml";
        objRequest.Accept = "application/xml";

        string creds = "username:password";
        byte[] encData_byte = new byte[creds.Length];
        encData_byte = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(creds);
        string encodedData = Convert.ToBase64String(encData_byte);

        objRequest.Headers.Add("Authorization", "Basic " + encodedData);

        XmlWriterSettings settings = new XmlWriterSettings();
        settings.Indent = true;
        settings.IndentChars = ("    ");

        using (XmlWriter writer = XmlWriter.Create(objRequest.GetRequestStream(), settings))
        {
            writer.WriteStartElement("time-entry");
            writer.WriteElementString("person-id", person_id);
            writer.WriteElementString("date", post_date);
            writer.WriteElementString("hours", post_hours);
            writer.WriteElementString("description", "Worked on Case #" + case_num);
            writer.WriteEndElement();
        }

        HttpWebResponse myHttpWebResponse = (HttpWebResponse)objRequest.GetResponse();

        context.Response.Write(myHttpWebResponse.StatusCode);

    }




    public bool IsReusable {
        get {
            return false;
        }
    }

}

Answer 1

I think it's that XmlWriter doesn't automatically close the stream returned by GetRequestStream(). Add:

settings.CloseOutput = true;

before creating the XmlWriter and see if that helps.

Answer 2

As a side note, you should be able to replace this:

string creds = "username:password";
byte[] encData_byte = new byte[creds.Length];
encData_byte = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(creds);
string encodedData = Convert.ToBase64String(encData_byte);

objRequest.Headers.Add("Authorization", "Basic " + encodedData);

with:

objRequest.Credentials = new NetworkCredential("username", "password");