How to get HttpContext.Current in ASP.NET Core?

Question

We are currently rewriting/converting our ASP.NET WebForms application using ASP.NET Core. Trying to avoid re-engineering as much as possible.

There is a section where we use HttpContext in a class library to check the current state. How can I access HttpContext.Current in .NET Core 1.0?

 var current = HttpContext.Current;
     if (current == null)
      {
       // do something here
       // string connection = Configuration.GetConnectionString("MyDb");
      }

I need to access this in order to construct current application host.

$"{current.Request.Url.Scheme}://{current.Request.Url.Host}{(current.Request.Url.Port == 80 ? "" : ":" + current.Request.Url.Port)}";

Answer 1

As a general rule, converting a Web Forms or MVC5 application to ASP.NET Core will require a significant amount of refactoring.

HttpContext.Current was removed in ASP.NET Core. Accessing the current HTTP context from a separate class library is the type of messy architecture that ASP.NET Core tries to avoid. There are a few ways to re-architect this in ASP.NET Core.

HttpContext property

You can access the current HTTP context via the HttpContext property on any controller. The closest thing to your original code sample would be to pass HttpContext into the method you are calling:

public class HomeController : Controller
{
    public IActionResult Index()
    {
        MyMethod(HttpContext);

        // Other code
    }
}

public void MyMethod(Microsoft.AspNetCore.Http.HttpContext context)
{
    var host = $"{context.Request.Scheme}://{context.Request.Host}";

    // Other code
}

HttpContext parameter in middleware

If you're writing custom middleware for the ASP.NET Core pipeline, the current request's HttpContext is passed into your Invoke method automatically:

public Task Invoke(HttpContext context)
{
    // Do something with the current HTTP context...
}

HTTP context accessor

Finally, you can use the IHttpContextAccessor helper service to get the HTTP context in any class that is managed by the ASP.NET Core dependency injection system. This is useful when you have a common service that is used by your controllers.

Request this interface in your constructor:

public MyMiddleware(IHttpContextAccessor httpContextAccessor)
{
    _httpContextAccessor = httpContextAccessor;
}

You can then access the current HTTP context in a safe way:

var context = _httpContextAccessor.HttpContext;
// Do something with the current HTTP context...

IHttpContextAccessor isn't always added to the service container by default, so register it in ConfigureServices just to be safe:

public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{
    services.AddHttpContextAccessor();
    // if < .NET Core 2.2 use this
    //services.TryAddSingleton<IHttpContextAccessor, HttpContextAccessor>();

    // Other code...
}