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

Alternatively - don't use BaseAddress at all. Put the whole URL in GetAsync()

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

Ran into a issue with the HTTPClient, even with the suggestions still could not get it to authenticate. Turns out I needed a trailing '/' in my relative path.

i.e.

var result = await _client.GetStringAsync(_awxUrl + "api/v2/inventories/?name=" + inventoryName);

var result = await _client.PostAsJsonAsync(_awxUrl + "api/v2/job_templates/" + templateId+"/launch/" , new {
                inventory = inventoryId
            });

Answer 4

Reference Resolution is described by RFC 3986 Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax. And that is exactly how it supposed to work. To preserve base URI path you need to add slash at the end of the base URI and remove slash at the beginning of relative URI.

If base URI contains non-empty path, merge procedure discards it's last part (after last /). Relevant section:

5.2.3. Merge Paths

The pseudocode above refers to a "merge" routine for merging a relative-path reference with the path of the base URI. This is accomplished as follows:

• If the base URI has a defined authority component and an empty path, then return a string consisting of "/" concatenated with the reference's path; otherwise

• return a string consisting of the reference's path component appended to all but the last segment of the base URI's path (i.e., excluding any characters after the right-most "/" in the base URI path, or excluding the entire base URI path if it does not contain any "/" characters).

If relative URI starts with a slash, it is called a absolute-path relative URI. In this case merge procedure ignore all base URI path. For more information check 5.2.2. Transform References section.