How can I read an Http response stream twice in C#?

Question

I am trying to read an Http response stream twice via the following:

HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
stream = response.GetResponseStream();
RssReader reader = new RssReader(stream);
do
{
  element = reader.Read();
  if (element is RssChannel)
  {
    feed.Channels.Add((RssChannel)element);
  }
} while (element != null);

StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(stream);
feed._FeedRawData = sr.ReadToEnd();

However when the StreamReader code executes there is no data returned because the stream has now reached the end. I tried to reset the stream via stream.Position = 0 but this throws an exception (I think because the stream can't have its position changed manually).

Basically, I would like to parse the stream for XML and have access to the raw data (in string format).

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Copy it into a new MemoryStream first. Then you can re-read the MemoryStream as many times as you like:

Stream responseStream = CopyAndClose(resp.GetResponseStream());
// Do something with the stream
responseStream.Position = 0;
// Do something with the stream again


private static Stream CopyAndClose(Stream inputStream)
{
    const int readSize = 256;
    byte[] buffer = new byte[readSize];
    MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();

    int count = inputStream.Read(buffer, 0, readSize);
    while (count > 0)
    {
        ms.Write(buffer, 0, count);
        count = inputStream.Read(buffer, 0, readSize);
    }
    ms.Position = 0;
    inputStream.Close();
    return ms;
}

Answer 2

have you tried resetting the stream position? if this does not work you can copy the stream to a MemoryStream and there you can reset the position (i.e. to 0) as often as you want.