HttpClient get Not returning json [duplicate]

Question

This rest endpoint https://api.stackexchange.com/2.3/questions?order=desc&sort=activity&site=stackoverflow returns a json response when i place it in a web browser.

Yet when i run the following

public class StackApi
{
    private const string BaseURI = "https://api.stackexchange.com/";
    private HttpClient _httpClient;

    public StackApi()
    {
        _httpClient=  new HttpClient();
        _httpClient.BaseAddress = new Uri(BaseURI);
        _httpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Accept.Clear();
        _httpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Accept.Add(new MediaTypeWithQualityHeaderValue("application/json"));
    }

    public async Task<string> GetQuestions()
    {
        var responseMessage  =
            await _httpClient.GetAsync("2.3/questions?order=desc&sort=activity&site=stackoverflow");

        if (responseMessage.IsSuccessStatusCode)
        {
            var responseString = await responseMessage.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();
            return responseString;
        }

        return string.Empty;
    }
}

The response is not in json it apears to be encoded somehow

The content type appears to be json

More then a little confused as to why this is not a json response.

Linda Lawton - DaImTo · Accepted Answer · 2022-08-27 15:34:49Z

1

Look at the content-encoding header of the response you got. It is gzip (check the long-ish header string in your screenshot at the far right side). To automatically let HttpClient uncompress it, see this answer to a related question: https://stackoverflow.com/a/27327208

var handler = new HttpClientHandler()
    {
        AutomaticDecompression = DecompressionMethods.GZip | DecompressionMethods.Deflate
    };        
    
    _httpClient=  new HttpClient(handler);

edited Aug 27, 2022 at 15:34

Linda Lawton - DaImTo

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answered Aug 27, 2022 at 15:18

user19858830

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4 Comments

Linda Lawton - DaImTo Over a year ago

Well that was far to easy. May i have your permission to edit your anwser and add the handler code?

user19858830 Over a year ago

Sure, go ahead. (Edit: Q already marked as duplicate of the other Q i linked to. I guess this makes editing my answer unnecessary now...)

rene Over a year ago

Note that SE is also willing to return a "deflate" encoding but it can't be tricked into not compressing the response: stackapps.com/questions/9213/…

Linda Lawton - DaImTo Over a year ago

@TheSkullCaveIsADarkPlace dont worry about it you can still get points for answering the question even if its been duplicated. I searched for everything, I thought it was en encoding issue. Never occurred to me it was compressed.

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