Intercept Web API Request and change body/content

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MVC

WebAPI

OWIN

Hello,

I am experimenting with OWIN middleware in an Web API application and I wish to intercept the request in the pipeline and decode the request body in flight before the request gets to the API Controller/Action.

I have taken a json string and base 64 encoded it as part of this test. I am able to intercept the request, read the body text, decode it as to get the original string but I am unable to update the request body with the new data. Here is a code snippet:

public override async Task Invoke(IOwinContext context)
        {
            if (context.Request.ContentType.Equals("text/plain"))
            {
                string body = new StreamReader(context.Request.Body).ReadToEnd();

                byte[] data = Convert.FromBase64String(body);
                string decodedString = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(data);

                context.Request.ContentType = "application/json";
                context.Request.Body = new MemoryStream(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(decodedString));
            }

            await Next.Invoke(context);
        }

This code executes without issue and I can see decoded string value having the correct data. The kicker is that when the request moves on to the controller / action, the body is that of the old data / encoded string.

Has anyone tried to intercept the api request via owin and replace it with something other than what was originally posted?

Sample controller / action snipped used to pull the value from the request body:

// POST api/values
        public void Post([FromBody]string value)
        {
            var req = Request;
            var x = value;

            var y = x;
        }

Thanks in advance!

CC

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