Visual Basic® Programmer's Guide to the .NET Framework Class Library

Implementing a Request/Response Model

Continuing on our journey up through the layers of the .NET networking libraries we arrive at those classes that implement a standard request/response model: the WebRequest and WebResponse classes. These classes are layered above the socket and stream level of interaction and deal with request/response traffic across the Internet. Here, we are afforded the ability to either deal at a protocol-specific level with items, or deal in a protocol-agnostic fashion. This will depend largely on the programming task that you are working on but the important thing to note is that you, as a .NET programmer, have a choice.

Creating Requests

The WebRequest and WebResponse classes form the underpinnings for the request/response ...