How to send curl PUT, DELETE and PATCH requests in C#

To send PUT, DELETE or PATCH requests in C# the curl way, set the method with -X in the command you pass to Curl.ExecuteAsync (-X PUT, -X PATCH, -X DELETE), or start the fluent builder with CurlRequestBuilder.Put, .Patch or .Delete.

dotnet add package CurlDotNet

PUT: replace a resource

using CurlDotNet;

var result = await Curl.ExecuteAsync("""
    curl -X PUT https://httpbin.org/put \
      -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
      -d '{"id":42,"name":"Ada","role":"admin"}'
    """);

Console.WriteLine(result.StatusCode);  // 200

PATCH: change part of a resource

using CurlDotNet;

var result = await Curl.ExecuteAsync(
    """curl -X PATCH https://httpbin.org/patch --json '{"role":"owner"}'""");

Console.WriteLine(result.StatusCode);

DELETE

using CurlDotNet;

var result = await Curl.ExecuteAsync(
    "curl -X DELETE https://httpbin.org/delete -H 'Authorization: Bearer my-token'");

Console.WriteLine(result.IsSuccess);  // many APIs answer 204 No Content

The fluent builder

using CurlDotNet.Core;

var put = await CurlRequestBuilder.Put("https://httpbin.org/put")
    .WithJson(new { id = 42, name = "Ada" }).ExecuteAsync();

var patch = await CurlRequestBuilder.Patch("https://httpbin.org/patch")
    .WithJson(new { role = "owner" }).ExecuteAsync();

var delete = await CurlRequestBuilder.Delete("https://httpbin.org/delete")
    .WithBearerToken("my-token").ExecuteAsync();

Other verbs go through CurlRequestBuilder.Request("OPTIONS", url) or -X OPTIONS.

A small REST client

CurlApiClient wraps a base URL and sends JSON for you:

using CurlDotNet;

var api = new CurlApiClient("https://httpbin.org", TimeSpan.FromSeconds(15));

var created = await api.PostJsonAsync("/post", new { name = "Ada" });
var updated = await api.PutJsonAsync("/put", new { name = "Ada L." });
var patched = await api.PatchJsonAsync("/patch", new { role = "owner" });
var deleted = await api.DeleteAsync("/delete");

With LibCurl

LibCurl.PutAsync and PatchAsync serialize an object body to JSON, but they do not add a JSON Content-Type themselves (without one the body goes out as application/x-www-form-urlencoded, as with curl -d). Add it as a default header:

using CurlDotNet.Lib;

using var curl = new LibCurl();
curl.WithHeader("Content-Type", "application/json");

var result = await curl.PutAsync("https://httpbin.org/put", new { id = 42 });
Console.WriteLine(result.StatusCode);

Checking the result

Expect 200 OK, 201 Created, 202 Accepted or 204 No Content on success; result.IsSuccess covers all of them. A 409 Conflict or 412 Precondition Failed does not throw, so check the status, call EnsureSuccess() to turn any non-2xx status into an exception, or add -f to the command to have curl’s CurlHttpReturnedErrorException (exit code 22) thrown for any status of 400 or above.

-T file is a shortcut for a PUT of a file’s bytes, and -X GET -d '...' sends a GET with a body, both as in curl. With -L, a method set with -X is kept on every redirect hop.