RestSharp print raw request and response headers

Question

I'm using RestSharp to make calls to a webservice. All is well but I was wondering if it would be possible to print the raw request headers and body that is sent out and the raw response headers and the response body that comes back.

This is my code where I create a request and get a response back

public static TResponse ExecutePostCall<TResponse, TRequest>(String url, TRequest requestData, string token= "") where TResponse : new()
{
    RestRequest request = new RestRequest(url, Method.POST);
    if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(token))
    {
        request.AddHeader("TOKEN", token);
    }


    request.RequestFormat = DataFormat.Json;
    request.AddBody(requestData);

    // print raw request here

    var response = _restClient.Execute<TResponse>(request);

    // print raw response here

    return response.Data;
}

so, Would it be possible to print the raw request and response?

Answer 1

RestSharp doesn't provide a mechanism to achieve exactly what you want and activating the .Net tracing is a bit overkilling IMO.

For logging (debugging) purposes (something that I can leave turned on for a while in PROD for example) I have found this approach to be very useful (although it has some details on how to call it, read below the code):

private void LogRequest(IRestRequest request, IRestResponse response, long durationMs)
{
        var requestToLog = new
        {
            resource = request.Resource,
            // Parameters are custom anonymous objects in order to have the parameter type as a nice string
            // otherwise it will just show the enum value
            parameters = request.Parameters.Select(parameter => new
            {
                name = parameter.Name,
                value = parameter.Value,
                type = parameter.Type.ToString()
            }),
            // ToString() here to have the method as a nice string otherwise it will just show the enum value
            method = request.Method.ToString(),
            // This will generate the actual Uri used in the request
            uri = _restClient.BuildUri(request),
        };

        var responseToLog = new
        {
            statusCode = response.StatusCode,
            content = response.Content,
            headers = response.Headers,
            // The Uri that actually responded (could be different from the requestUri if a redirection occurred)
            responseUri = response.ResponseUri,
            errorMessage = response.ErrorMessage,
        };

        Trace.Write(string.Format("Request completed in {0} ms, Request: {1}, Response: {2}",
                durationMs, 
                JsonConvert.SerializeObject(requestToLog),
                JsonConvert.SerializeObject(responseToLog)));
}

Things to note:

• Headers, Url segments, QueryString parameters, body, etc. all are considered parameters for RestSharp, all that appear in the parameters collection of the request, with their corresponding type.
• The log method must be called AFTER the request took place. This is needed because of the way RestSharp works, the Execute method will add headers, run the authenticators (if some configured), etc. and all these will modify the request. So in order to have the all the real parameters sent logged, the Execute method should have been called before logging the request.
• RestSharp itself will never throw (instead errors get saved in the response.ErrorException property), but I think deserialization could throw (not sure) and besides I needed to log the raw response, so I chose to implement my own deserialization.
• Have in mind that RestSharp uses its own formatting when converting parameters values to generate the Uri, so serializing the parameters to log them may not show the exact same things that were put in the Uri. That's why the IRestClient.BuildUri method it's pretty cool to get the actually called Uri (including the base url, the replaced url segments, the added queryString parameters, etc).
• EDIT: Also have in mind that it could happen that the serializer RestSharp is using for the body is not the same this code is using, so I guess code could be adjusted to use request.JsonSerializer.Serialize() for rendering the body parameter (I haven't tried this).
• Some custom code was needed to achieve nice descriptions in the logs for the enums values.
• StopWatch usage could be moved around to include deserialization in the measuring.

Here it is a basic complete base class example with logging (using NLog):

using System;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Linq;
using NLog;
using Newtonsoft.Json;
using RestSharp;

namespace Apis
{
    public abstract class RestApiBase
    {
        protected readonly IRestClient _restClient;
        protected readonly ILogger _logger;

        protected RestApiBase(IRestClient restClient, ILogger logger)
        {
            _restClient = restClient;
            _logger = logger;
        }

        protected virtual IRestResponse Execute(IRestRequest request)
        {
            IRestResponse response = null;
            var stopWatch = new Stopwatch();

            try
            {
                stopWatch.Start();
                response = _restClient.Execute(request);
                stopWatch.Stop();

                // CUSTOM CODE: Do more stuff here if you need to...

                return response;
            }
            catch (Exception e)
            {
                // Handle exceptions in your CUSTOM CODE (restSharp will never throw itself)
            }
            finally
            {
                LogRequest(request, response, stopWatch.ElapsedMilliseconds);
            }

            return null;
        }

        protected virtual T Execute<T>(IRestRequest request) where T : new()
        {
            IRestResponse response = null;
            var stopWatch = new Stopwatch();

            try
            {
                stopWatch.Start();
                response = _restClient.Execute(request);
                stopWatch.Stop();

                // CUSTOM CODE: Do more stuff here if you need to...

                // We can't use RestSharp deserialization because it could throw, and we need a clean response
                // We need to implement our own deserialization.
                var returnType = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<T>(response.Content);
                return returnType;
            }
            catch (Exception e)
            {
                // Handle exceptions in your CUSTOM CODE (restSharp will never throw itself)
                // Handle exceptions in deserialization
            }
            finally
            {
                LogRequest(request, response, stopWatch.ElapsedMilliseconds);
            }

            return default(T);
        }

        private void LogRequest(IRestRequest request, IRestResponse response, long durationMs)
        {
            _logger.Trace(() =>
            {
                var requestToLog = new
                {
                    resource = request.Resource,
                    // Parameters are custom anonymous objects in order to have the parameter type as a nice string
                    // otherwise it will just show the enum value
                    parameters = request.Parameters.Select(parameter => new
                    {
                        name = parameter.Name,
                        value = parameter.Value,
                        type = parameter.Type.ToString()
                    }),
                    // ToString() here to have the method as a nice string otherwise it will just show the enum value
                    method = request.Method.ToString(),
                    // This will generate the actual Uri used in the request
                    uri = _restClient.BuildUri(request),
                };

                var responseToLog = new
                {
                    statusCode = response.StatusCode,
                    content = response.Content,
                    headers = response.Headers,
                    // The Uri that actually responded (could be different from the requestUri if a redirection occurred)
                    responseUri = response.ResponseUri,
                    errorMessage = response.ErrorMessage,
                };

                return string.Format("Request completed in {0} ms, Request: {1}, Response: {2}",
                    durationMs, JsonConvert.SerializeObject(requestToLog),
                    JsonConvert.SerializeObject(responseToLog));
            });
        }
    }
}

This class will log something like this (pretty formatted for pasting here):

Request completed in 372 ms, Request : {
    "resource" : "/Event/Create/{hostId}/{startTime}",
    "parameters" : [{
            "name" : "hostId",
            "value" : "116644",
            "type" : "UrlSegment"
        }, {
            "name" : "startTime",
            "value" : "2016-05-18T19:48:58.9744911Z",
            "type" : "UrlSegment"
        }, {
            "name" : "application/json",
            "value" : "{\"durationMinutes\":720,\"seats\":100,\"title\":\"Hello StackOverflow!\"}",
            "type" : "RequestBody"
        }, {
            "name" : "api_key",
            "value" : "123456",
            "type" : "QueryString"
        }, {
            "name" : "Accept",
            "value" : "application/json, application/xml, text/json, text/x-json, text/javascript, text/xml",
            "type" : "HttpHeader"
        }
    ],
    "method" : "POST",
    "uri" : "http://127.0.0.1:8000/Event/Create/116644/2016-05-18T19%3A48%3A58.9744911Z?api_key=123456"
}, Response : {
    "statusCode" : 200,
    "content" : "{\"eventId\":2000045,\"hostId\":116644,\"scheduledLength\":720,\"seatsReserved\":100,\"startTime\":\"2016-05-18T19:48:58.973Z\"",
    "headers" : [{
            "Name" : "Access-Control-Allow-Origin",
            "Value" : "*",
            "Type" : 3
        }, {
            "Name" : "Access-Control-Allow-Methods",
            "Value" : "POST, GET, OPTIONS, PUT, DELETE, HEAD",
            "Type" : 3
        }, {
            "Name" : "Access-Control-Allow-Headers",
            "Value" : "X-PINGOTHER, Origin, X-Requested-With, Content-Type, Accept",
            "Type" : 3
        }, {
            "Name" : "Access-Control-Max-Age",
            "Value" : "1728000",
            "Type" : 3
        }, {
            "Name" : "Content-Length",
            "Value" : "1001",
            "Type" : 3
        }, {
            "Name" : "Content-Type",
            "Value" : "application/json",
            "Type" : 3
        }, {
            "Name" : "Date",
            "Value" : "Wed, 18 May 2016 17:44:16 GMT",
            "Type" : 3
        }
    ],
    "responseUri" : "http://127.0.0.1:8000/Event/Create/116644/2016-05-18T19%3A48%3A58.9744911Z?api_key=123456",
    "errorMessage" : null
}

Hope you find this useful!