C# HttpWebRequest of type "application/x-www-form-urlencoded" - how to send '&' character in content body?

Question

I'm writing a small API-connected application in C#.

I connect to a API which has a method that takes a long string, the contents of a calendar(ics) file.

I'm doing it like this:

HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)HttpWebRequest.Create(URL);
request.Method = "POST";
request.AllowAutoRedirect = false;
request.CookieContainer = my_cookie_container;
request.Accept = "text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8";
request.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";

string iCalStr = GetCalendarAsString();

string strNew = "&uploadfile=true&file=" + iCalStr;

using (StreamWriter stOut = new StreamWriter(request.GetRequestStream(), System.Text.Encoding.ASCII))
 {
     stOut.Write(strNew);
     stOut.Close();
 }

This seems to work great, until I add some specific HTML in my calendar.

If I have a '&nbsp' somewhere in my calendar (or similar) the server only gets all the data up to the '&'-point, so I'm assuming the '&' makes it look like anything after this point belongs to a new parameter?

How can I fix this?

Answer 1

First install "Microsoft ASP.NET Web API Client" nuget package:

  PM > Install-Package Microsoft.AspNet.WebApi.Client

Then use the following function to post your data:

public static async Task<TResult> PostFormUrlEncoded<TResult>(string url, IEnumerable<KeyValuePair<string, string>> postData)
{
    using (var httpClient = new HttpClient())
    {
        using (var content = new FormUrlEncodedContent(postData))
        {
            content.Headers.Clear();
            content.Headers.Add("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");

            HttpResponseMessage response = await httpClient.PostAsync(url, content);

            return await response.Content.ReadAsAsync<TResult>();
        }
    }
}

And this is how to use it:

TokenResponse tokenResponse = 
    await PostFormUrlEncoded<TokenResponse>(OAuth2Url, OAuth2PostData);

or

TokenResponse tokenResponse = 
    (Task.Run(async () 
        => await PostFormUrlEncoded<TokenResponse>(OAuth2Url, OAuth2PostData)))
        .Result

or (not recommended)

TokenResponse tokenResponse = 
    PostFormUrlEncoded<TokenResponse>(OAuth2Url, OAuth2PostData).Result;