Why is HttpClient BaseAddress not working?

Question

Consider the following code, where the BaseAddress defines a partial URI path.

using (var handler = new HttpClientHandler())
using (var client = new HttpClient(handler))
{
    client.BaseAddress = new Uri("http://something.com/api");
    var response = await client.GetAsync("/resource/7");
}

I expect this to perform a GET request to http://something.com/api/resource/7. But it doesn't.

After some searching, I find this question and answer: HttpClient with BaseAddress. The suggestion is to place / on the end of the BaseAddress.

using (var handler = new HttpClientHandler())
using (var client = new HttpClient(handler))
{
    client.BaseAddress = new Uri("http://something.com/api/");
    var response = await client.GetAsync("/resource/7");
}

It still doesn't work. Here's the documentation: HttpClient.BaseAddress What's going on here?

Answer 1

It turns out that, out of the four possible permutations of including or excluding trailing or leading forward slashes on the BaseAddress and the relative URI passed to the GetAsync method -- or whichever other method of HttpClient -- only one permutation works. You must place a slash at the end of the BaseAddress, and you must not place a slash at the beginning of your relative URI, as in the following example.

using (var handler = new HttpClientHandler())
using (var client = new HttpClient(handler))
{
    client.BaseAddress = new Uri("http://something.com/api/");
    var response = await client.GetAsync("resource/7");
}

Even though I answered my own question, I figured I'd contribute the solution here since, again, this unfriendly behavior is undocumented. My colleague and I spent most of the day trying to fix a problem that was ultimately caused by this oddity of HttpClient.