How to change the timeout on a .NET WebClient object

You can extend the timeout: inherit the original WebClient class and override the webrequest getter to set your own timeout, like in the following example.

MyWebClient was a private class in my case:

private class MyWebClient : WebClient
{
    protected override WebRequest GetWebRequest(Uri uri)
    {
        WebRequest w = base.GetWebRequest(uri);
        w.Timeout = 20 * 60 * 1000;
        return w;
    }
}

The first solution did not work for me but here is some code that did work for me.

    private class WebClient : System.Net.WebClient
    {
        public int Timeout { get; set; }

        protected override WebRequest GetWebRequest(Uri uri)
        {
            WebRequest lWebRequest = base.GetWebRequest(uri);
            lWebRequest.Timeout = Timeout;
            ((HttpWebRequest)lWebRequest).ReadWriteTimeout = Timeout;
            return lWebRequest;
        }
    }

    private string GetRequest(string aURL)
    {
        using (var lWebClient = new WebClient())
        {
            lWebClient.Timeout = 600 * 60 * 1000;
            return lWebClient.DownloadString(aURL);
        }
    }

You need to use HttpWebRequest rather than WebClient as you can't set the timeout on WebClient without extending it (even though it uses the HttpWebRequest). Using the HttpWebRequest instead will allow you to set the timeout.