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Send custom HTTP headers in C# with HTTPWebRequest

In this guide, we'll show you how to send custom HTTP headers when converting HTML to PDF using C# and the HTTPWebRequest library.

When converting HTML to PDF, you might need to send custom HTTP headers to access protected resources or provide additional information.

using System;
using System.Net;
using System.Text;
using System.IO;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

// You can get an API key at https://pdfshift.io
var apiKey = "sk_xxxxxxxxxxxx";

var request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("https://api.pdfshift.io/v3/convert/pdf");
request.Method = "POST";
request.ContentType = "application/json";
request.Headers.Add("X-API-Key", apiKey);

var payload = new
{
    source = "https://www.example.com",
    // Send custom HTTP headers
    headers = new
    {
        authorization = "Bearer token123",
        "user-agent" = "MyApp/1.0"
    }
};

var json = System.Text.Json.JsonSerializer.Serialize(payload);
byte[] data = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(json);
request.ContentLength = data.Length;

using (var stream = request.GetRequestStream())
{
    stream.Write(data, 0, data.Length);
}

try
{
    var response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
    
    // Handle errors:
    if (response.StatusCode >= HttpStatusCode.BadRequest)
    {
        throw new Exception($"Request failed with status code {response.StatusCode}");
    }

    using (var reader = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream()))
    {
        var result = reader.ReadToEnd();
        File.WriteAllText("result.pdf", result);
    }

    Console.WriteLine("The PDF document was generated and saved to result.pdf");
}
catch (WebException ex)
{
    Console.WriteLine($"Error: {ex.Message}");
}

This allows you to customize the HTTP requests sent to the source URL.

For further details on the headers property and its usage, please refer to our dedicated documentation.

We hope this guide was helpful. If you have any questions or noticed any issues on the code above,
feel free to drop us a line.