Customize your .NET client

You can customize the behavior of the API clients by creating a custom configuration This lets you change timeouts, or add HTTP headers.

To modify all requests made with a client, create a custom configuration. To modify individual requests, pass custom request options.

Use a custom host

You can change the default hosts to which the API client connects:

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SearchConfig config = new SearchConfig("YourApplicationID", "YourApiKey")
{
    CustomHosts = new List<StatefulHost>
    {
        new StatefulHost
        {
            Url = "yourapplication.example.net",
            Up = true,
            LastUse = DateTime.UtcNow,
            Accept = CallType.Read | CallType.Write,
        },
    }
};

SearchClient client = new SearchClient(config);

Changing the hosts can be useful if you want to proxy the search requests through another server, for example, to process the request or response, or to perform custom analytics.

Add HTTP headers to every request

Adding HTTP headers to your configuration allow you to set parameters for every request, for example, a user identifier or an IP address. This can be useful for analytics, geographic searches, or to implement API key rate limits.

For an overview of available HTTP headers, see Add HTTP headers to your requests

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var configuration = new SearchConfig("YourApplicationID", "YourWriteAPIKey");
configuration.DefaultHeaders.Add("NAME-OF-HEADER", "value-of-header");

SearchClient client = new SearchClient(configuration);

Change timeouts for all requests

Network connections and DNS resolution can be slow. That’s why the API clients come with default timeouts.

You shouldn’t change the default timeouts, unless you have a good reason.

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var configuration = new SearchConfig("YourApplicationID", "YourWriteAPIKey")
{
  ConnectTimeout = 15, // connection timeout in seconds
  ReadTimeout = 5, // read timeout in seconds
  WriteTimeout = 30, // write timeout in seconds
  HostDownDelay = 300 // delay before retrying a host we know was down, in seconds (= 5 minutes)
};