Downloading file asynchronously within ArcMap using C#

Question

I am writing an AddIn for ArcGIS 10.x using C#. I want to asynchronously download a file within ArcMap using HttpClient. My test code works in a hello world app but just hangs when I debug it in ArcMap.

Is it possible to write multi-threaded code using async within ArcMap AddIns?

private static async Task<raveInfo> GetLatestVersion(string url, HttpClient client)
    {
        client.DefaultRequestHeaders.UserAgent.TryParseAdd("request");
        client.DefaultRequestHeaders.Accept.Clear();
        client.DefaultRequestHeaders.Accept.Add(new MediaTypeWithQualityHeaderValue("application/json"));
        client.DefaultRequestHeaders.ConnectionClose = true;

        using (var httpResponse = await client.GetAsync(url))
        {
            httpResponse.EnsureSuccessStatusCode(); // throws if not 200-299

            if (httpResponse.Content is object && httpResponse.Content.Headers.ContentType.MediaType == "application/json")
            {
                var contentStream = await httpResponse.Content.ReadAsStreamAsync();
                using (var streamReader = new StreamReader(contentStream))
                {
                    using (var jsonReader = new JsonTextReader(streamReader))
                    {
                        JsonSerializer serializer = new JsonSerializer();
                        try
                        {
                            return serializer.Deserialize<raveInfo>(jsonReader);
                        }
                        catch (JsonReaderException)
                        {
                            throw new Exception("Invalid JSON.");
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
            else
            {
                throw new Exception("HTTP Response was invalid and cannot be deserialised.");
            }
        }

        return null;
    }

Answer 1

I ended up using WebClient.

// http://csharpexamples.com/download-files-synchronous-asynchronous-url-c/
using (WebClient webClient = new WebClient())
{
    webClient.DownloadFile(remotePath, localPath);
}