.NET HttpClient: How to set the request method dynamically?

Question

How can one use HttpClient and set the method dynamically without having to do something like:

    public async Task<HttpResponseMessage> DoRequest(string url, HttpContent content, string method)
    {
        HttpResponseMessage response;

        using (var client = new HttpClient())
        {
            switch (method.ToUpper())
            {
                case "POST":
                    response = await client.PostAsync(url, content);
                    break;
                case "GET":
                    response = await client.GetAsync(url);
                    break;
                default:
                    response = null;
                    // Unsupported method exception etc.
                    break;
            }
        }

        return response;
    }

At the moment it looks like you would have to use:

HttpWebRequest req = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url);
req.Method = "POST";

Answer 1

but there is no ready constructor that converts HTTP method string to HttpMethod

Well that's not true any longer...¹

public HttpMethod(string method);

Can be used like this:

var httpMethod = new HttpMethod(method.ToUpper());

Here is working code.

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Net.Http;
using System.Text;

namespace MyNamespace.HttpClient
{
public static class HttpClient
{
    private static readonly System.Net.Http.HttpClient NetHttpClient = new System.Net.Http.HttpClient();
    static HttpClient()
    {}

    public static async System.Threading.Tasks.Task<string> ExecuteMethod(string targetAbsoluteUrl, string methodName, List<KeyValuePair<string, string>> headers = null, string content = null, string contentType = null)
    {
        var httpMethod = new HttpMethod(methodName.ToUpper());

        var requestMessage = new HttpRequestMessage(httpMethod, targetAbsoluteUrl);

        if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(content) || !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(contentType))
        {
            var contentBytes = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(content);
            requestMessage.Content = new ByteArrayContent(contentBytes);

            headers = new List<KeyValuePair<string, string>>
            {
                new KeyValuePair<string, string>("Content-type", contentType)
            };
        }

        headers?.ForEach(kvp => { requestMessage.Headers.Add(kvp.Key, kvp.Value); });

        var response = await NetHttpClient.SendAsync(requestMessage);

        return await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();

    }
}
}