Dealing with “The server committed a protocol violation. Section=ResponseStatusLine”

Today I had an O2 Platform user that had a problem where some of its scripts/UnitTest did not work when not routing the requests via the Fiddler web project.

When making the request directly we would receive a The server committed a protocol violation. Section=ResponseStatusLine .NET internal execption (which a Google Search will show it is quite common).

After a bit of  debug (and a couple O2 scripts later) I was able to track it down to the UseUnsafeHeaderParsing configuration setting which needs to be set to true (the defaulf is false)

There are two ways to set this UseUnsafeHeaderParsing value:

1) on the {exefile}.appconfig  settings file:

<system.net>
<settings>
<httpWebRequest useUnsafeHeaderParsing = "true"/>
</settings>
</system.net>

2) programatically

Action<bool> setUseUnsafeHeaderParsing =
 (value)=>{
   var settingsSection = "System".assembly().type("SettingsSectionInternal");
   var section =  settingsSection.prop("Section");
   section.field("useUnsafeHeaderParsing",value);
   var useUnsafeHeaderParsing  = section.field("useUnsafeHeaderParsing");
   "useUnsafeHeaderParsing = {0}".info(useUnsafeHeaderParsing);
  };
setUseUnsafeHeaderParsing(true); 

 This script is also a good example of O2‘s powerful refection API.

Note for example how this code should look like (when using .NET Reflection APIs directly). Code snippet from http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/netfxnetcom/thread/ff098248-551c-4da9-8ba5-358a9f8ccc57

public static bool SetAllowUnsafeHeaderParsing20()
{
   //Get the assembly that contains the internal class
  Assembly aNetAssembly = Assembly.GetAssembly(typeof(System.Net.Configuration.SettingsSection));
  if (aNetAssembly != null)
  {
    //Use the assembly in order to get the internal type for the internal class
    Type aSettingsType = aNetAssembly.GetType("System.Net.Configuration.SettingsSectionInternal");
    if (aSettingsType != null)
    {
      //Use the internal static property to get an instance of the internal settings class.
      //If the static instance isn't created allready the property will create it for us.
      object anInstance = aSettingsType.InvokeMember("Section",
      BindingFlags.Static | BindingFlags.GetProperty | BindingFlags.NonPublic, null, null, new object[] { });
      if (anInstance != null)
      {
        //Locate the private bool field that tells the framework is unsafe header parsing should be allowed or not
        FieldInfo aUseUnsafeHeaderParsing = aSettingsType.GetField("useUnsafeHeaderParsing", BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance);
        if (aUseUnsafeHeaderParsing != null)
        {
          aUseUnsafeHeaderParsing.SetValue(anInstance, true);
          return true;
        }
      }
    }
  }
  return false;
}

In fact, the O2 Script can be reduced further to:

Action<bool> setUseUnsafeHeaderParsing =
 (value)=>{
            "System".assembly().type("SettingsSectionInternal")
                    .prop("Section").field("useUnsafeHeaderParsing",value); 
          };
setUseUnsafeHeaderParsing(false);