How to perform POST operation on Windows Phone 8.1 - windows-phone-8

Question

I am struggling to successfully implement a POST operation within Windows Phone 8.1.
PostMessage method executes without any exceptions being caught.
However, the POST method within MessagesController never gets invoked.
How do I perform a POST for Windows Phone 8.1?
The code is below:
internal async Task PostMessage(string text)
{
Globals.MemberId = 1;
int memberId = 2;
// server to POST to
string url = #"http://localhost:17634/api/messages";
try
{
// HTTP web request
var httpWebRequest = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url);
httpWebRequest.ContentType = "text/plain; charset=utf-8";
httpWebRequest.Method = "POST";
// Write the request Asynchronously
using (var stream = await Task.Factory.FromAsync<Stream>(httpWebRequest.BeginGetRequestStream,
httpWebRequest.EndGetRequestStream, null))
{
//create some json string
var message = new Message() { FromId = Globals.MemberId, ToId = memberId, Content = text, Timestamp = DateTime.Now };
var json = string.Format("{0}{1}", "action=", JsonConvert.SerializeObject(message));
// convert json to byte array
byte[] jsonAsBytes = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(json);
// Write the bytes to the stream
await stream.WriteAsync(jsonAsBytes, 0, jsonAsBytes.Length);
}
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
Debug.WriteLine(ex.Message);
}
}
public class MessagesController : ApiController
{
public HttpResponseMessage Post(Message message)
{
throw new NotImplementedException();
}
}
public class Message
{
public int MessageId { get; set; }
public int FromId { get; set; }
public int ToId { get; set; }
public DateTime Timestamp { get; set; }
public string Content { get; set; }
}

Answer 1

The following link resolved my issue.
The updated client is as follows:
using (var client = new System.Net.Http.HttpClient())
{
// New code:
client.BaseAddress = new Uri(Globals.URL_PREFIX);
client.DefaultRequestHeaders.Accept.Clear();
client.DefaultRequestHeaders.Accept.Add(new MediaTypeWithQualityHeaderValue("application/json"));
var message = new Message() { MessageId = 0, FromId = Globals.MemberId, ToId = memberId, Content = text, Timestamp = DateTime.Now };
var json_object = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(message);
var response = await client.PostAsync("api/messages", new StringContent(json_object.ToString(), Encoding.UTF8, "application/json"));
Debug.Assert(response.StatusCode == System.Net.HttpStatusCode.Accepted);
}

Answer 2

This works fine for me. The function accepts an payload of type T. The server accepts a JSON object and returns a JSON response.
public async static Task SendRequestPacket<T>(object payload)
{
Uri theUri = new Uri("the_uri");
//Create an Http client and set the headers we want
HttpClient aClient = new HttpClient();
aClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Accept.Add(new MediaTypeWithQualityHeaderValue("application/json"));
aClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Host = theUri.Host;
//Create a Json Serializer for our type
DataContractJsonSerializer jsonSer = new DataContractJsonSerializer(typeof(T));
// use the serializer to write the object to a MemoryStream
MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
jsonSer.WriteObject(ms, payload);
ms.Position = 0;
//use a Stream reader to construct the StringContent (Json)
StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(ms);
StringContent theContent = new StringContent(sr.ReadToEnd(), Encoding.UTF8, "application/json");
//Post the data
HttpResponseMessage aResponse = await aClient.PostAsync(theUri, theContent);
if (aResponse.IsSuccessStatusCode)
{
string content = await aResponse.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();
System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(content);
}
else
{
// show the response status code
}
}

Answer 3

Just dont use HttpWebRequest if you are not forced to in any way.
This example is using HttpClient() and it is good to always have the client created once and not every time you make a request.
So in your class add:
private static HttpClient _client;
public static Uri ServerBaseUri
{
get { return new Uri("http://localhost:17634/api"); }
}
public ClassConstructor()
{
_client = new HttpClient();
}
internal async Task<ResponseType> PostMessage(string text)
{
Globals.MemberId = 1;
int memberId = 2;
try
{
var js = "{ JSON_OBJECT }";
var json = new StringContent(js);
json.Headers.ContentType = MediaTypeHeaderValue.Parse("application/json");
var response = await Client.PostAsync(new Uri(ServerBaseUri, "/messages"), json);
var reply = await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();
} catch (Exception)
{
return null;
}
}
More on HttpClient.