If you need to ensure that some string coming as user input is valid url you could use the Uri.TryCreate method:
Uri uri;
string someUrl = ...
if (!Uri.TryCreate(someUrl, UriKind.Absolute, out uri))
{
// the someUrl string did not contain a valid url
// inform your users about that
}
else
{
var request = WebRequest.Create(uri);
// ... safely proceed with executing the request
}
Now if on the other hand you want to be building urls in .NET there’s the UriBuilder class specifically designed for that purpose. Let’s take an example. Suppose you wanted to build the following url: http://example.com/path?foo=bar&baz=bazinga#some_fragment where the bar and bazinga values are coming from the user:
string foo = ... coming from user input
string baz = ... coming from user input
var uriBuilder = new UriBuilder("http://example.com/path");
var parameters = HttpUtility.ParseQueryString(string.Empty);
parameters["foo"] = foo;
parameters["baz"] = baz;
uriBuilder.Query = parameters.ToString();
uriBuilder.Fragment = "some_fragment";
Uri finalUrl = uriBuilder.Uri;
var request = WebRequest.Create(finalUrl);
... safely proceed with executing the request