HttpHandler

After a long hiatus from posting articles, today I am presenting to you a great post discussing why we need to implement HttpHandler and how to implement a custom HttpHandler in Asp.Net .

An HTTPhandler may be defined as an end point that is executed in response to a request and is used to handle specific requests based on extensions. The ASP.Net runtime engine selects the appropriate handler to serve an incoming request based on the file extension of the request URL.

so, let's explain it in a simplest way, Imaging we have a 3rd party Let's name it Aggregator I need to make an httphandler and give them the path of this httphandler so what they shoud do, They have to use my httphandler path to configure their code and properties, so after they finish from the configuration they have to send to me a request using my httphandler path so it will go to the process method of the specific httpandler and process all the operators inside it and returning a response, I'll show you an example of how to implement this feature in Asp.net .

   public class AggregatorHandler: IHttpHandler

   {

       public bool IsReusable

       {

           get { return false; }
       }

       public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context)

       {
           // Here I need to process all the operators I have
           throw new NotImplementedException();
       }

   }

}        

Note that your custom HTTP handler should have a property called IsReusable and a method called ProcessRequest. While the former is used to specify whether the handler can be reused, the latter is a method that does the actual processing for you.

Here's how you can register your handler in the application's web.config file.

<httpHandlers>

   <add verb="*" path="AggregatorHandler.api" type="AggregatorFolder.AggregatorHandler"/>

</httpHandlers>        

After creating the custom HttpHandler and configuring it in the web.config, we can now provide the third party with the path: AggregatorHandler.api. They must send their request using this path after configuring their code using this endpoint.

In Summary:

In ASP.NET , an HttpHandler processes incoming HTTP requests and generates responses. It allows developers to create custom logic for handling specific requests. HttpHandlers are configured in the web.config file and are useful for serving dynamic content or implementing custom API endpoints. They provide a flexible way to customize ASP.NET application behavior at the request level.