In my ASP.NET MVC application I'm reading an external file
from URL and saving it into a directory on my server. I do this in a loop for
every few seconds to have actual data if the file was modified.
What I need is to recognize that the LastWrittenTime of the
file accessed via the URL is different from file already downloaded to the
server. I cannot use FileInfo class because "URI formats are not
supported".
So how do I get the last written time of the file from the
URL without needing to download the full file for every loop?
Assuming your HTTP Server allows this.
System.Net.WebRequest req = System.Net.HttpWebRequest.Create("http:\\your\url.ext");req.Method = "HEAD";
using (System.Net.WebResponse resp = req.GetResponse())
{
DateTime LastModified;
if(DateTime.TryParse(resp.Headers.Get("Last-Modified"), out LastModified))
{
//Check if date is good and then go to full download method.
}
}
When this method doesn't work because the server doesn't allow it. Then the only way of doing this is by fully downloading the file.