title: To consume a RESTful web service in C#, should I use HttpWebRequest?
body: <p>How do I consume a RESTful web service in C# code?</p>
  
  <p>NOTE: by RESTful, I mean non-SOAP. For example, in the flickr API you can call their web service as follows to return JSON data:</p>
  
  <p><a href="http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?tags=cats&amp;tagmode=any&amp;format=json" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?tags=cats&amp;tagmode=any&amp;format=json</a></p>
  
  <p>Do I simply use HttpWebRequest?</p>
  
  <p>What if I'm using a web service that takes POST parameters? Would that use HttpWebRequest also?</p>
  
  <p>Is there any benefit to using WCF on the consumer side?</p>