Edit: This question looks like it might be the same problem, but has no responses…

Edit: In test case 5 the task appears to be stuck in WaitingForActivation state.

I’ve encountered some odd behaviour using the System.Net.Http.HttpClient in .NET 4.5 – where “awaiting” the result of a call to (e.g.) httpClient.GetAsync(...) will never return.

This only occurs in certain circumstances when using the new async/await language functionality and Tasks API – the code always seems to work when using only continuations.

Here’s some code which reproduces the problem – drop this into a new “MVC 4 WebApi project” in Visual Studio 11 to expose the following GET endpoints:

/api/test1
/api/test2
/api/test3
/api/test4
/api/test5 <--- never completes
/api/test6

Each of the endpoints here return the same data (the response headers from stackoverflow.com) except for /api/test5 which never completes.

Have I encountered a bug in the HttpClient class, or am I misusing the API in some way?

Code to reproduce:

public class BaseApiController : ApiController
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Retrieves data using continuations
    /// </summary>
    protected Task<string> Continuations_GetSomeDataAsync()
    {
        var httpClient = new HttpClient();

        var t = httpClient.GetAsync("http://stackoverflow.com", HttpCompletionOption.ResponseHeadersRead);

        return t.ContinueWith(t1 => t1.Result.Content.Headers.ToString());
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Retrieves data using async/await
    /// </summary>
    protected async Task<string> AsyncAwait_GetSomeDataAsync()
    {
        var httpClient = new HttpClient();

        var result = await httpClient.GetAsync("http://stackoverflow.com", HttpCompletionOption.ResponseHeadersRead);

        return result.Content.Headers.ToString();
    }
}

public class Test1Controller : BaseApiController
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Handles task using Async/Await
    /// </summary>
    public async Task<string> Get()
    {
        var data = await Continuations_GetSomeDataAsync();

        return data;
    }
}

public class Test2Controller : BaseApiController
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Handles task by blocking the thread until the task completes
    /// </summary>
    public string Get()
    {
        var task = Continuations_GetSomeDataAsync();

        var data = task.GetAwaiter().GetResult();

        return data;
    }
}

public class Test3Controller : BaseApiController
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Passes the task back to the controller host
    /// </summary>
    public Task<string> Get()
    {
        return Continuations_GetSomeDataAsync();
    }
}

public class Test4Controller : BaseApiController
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Handles task using Async/Await
    /// </summary>
    public async Task<string> Get()
    {
        var data = await AsyncAwait_GetSomeDataAsync();

        return data;
    }
}

public class Test5Controller : BaseApiController
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Handles task by blocking the thread until the task completes
    /// </summary>
    public string Get()
    {
        var task = AsyncAwait_GetSomeDataAsync();

        var data = task.GetAwaiter().GetResult();

        return data;
    }
}

public class Test6Controller : BaseApiController
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Passes the task back to the controller host
    /// </summary>
    public Task<string> Get()
    {
        return AsyncAwait_GetSomeDataAsync();
    }
}