How to use WebRequest to POST some data and read response?

Question

Need to have the server make a POST to an API, how do I add POST values to a WebRequest object and how do I send it and get the response (it will be a string) out?

I need to POST TWO values, and sometimes more, I see in these examples where it says string postData = "a string to post"; but how do I let the thing I am POSTing to know that there is multiple form values?

Answer 1

From MSDN

// Create a request using a URL that can receive a post. 
WebRequest request = WebRequest.Create ("http://contoso.com/PostAccepter.aspx ");
// Set the Method property of the request to POST.
request.Method = "POST";
// Create POST data and convert it to a byte array.
string postData = "This is a test that posts this string to a Web server.";
byte[] byteArray = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes (postData);
// Set the ContentType property of the WebRequest.
request.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";
// Set the ContentLength property of the WebRequest.
request.ContentLength = byteArray.Length;
// Get the request stream.
Stream dataStream = request.GetRequestStream ();
// Write the data to the request stream.
dataStream.Write (byteArray, 0, byteArray.Length);
// Close the Stream object.
dataStream.Close ();
// Get the response.
WebResponse response = request.GetResponse ();
// Display the status.
Console.WriteLine (((HttpWebResponse)response).StatusDescription);
// Get the stream containing content returned by the server.
dataStream = response.GetResponseStream ();
// Open the stream using a StreamReader for easy access.
StreamReader reader = new StreamReader (dataStream);
// Read the content.
string responseFromServer = reader.ReadToEnd ();
// Display the content.
Console.WriteLine (responseFromServer);
// Clean up the streams.
reader.Close ();
dataStream.Close ();
response.Close ();

Take into account that the information must be sent in the format key1=value1&key2=value2