As per this code sample, I'm attempting to make a .net httpwebrequest from my local machine to a local bitcoind -daemon server. However, I'm only receiving a 400 bad request at webRequest.GetResponse().

I am completely stumped as to how to proceed - is there anything obviously wrong with this code? I have the bitcoin.conf file set up with the below username and pass, and it is set to port 8332. These are the ONLY settings I've set in the bitcoin.conf. I'm a noobie in both web requests and the Bitcoin api, so I suspect it's something stupidly obvious.

For a little more information, when I manually navigate to localhost:8332 in the browser, the credentials I use in my program work, and the web page returns:

{"result":null,"error":{"code":-32700,"message":"Parse error"},"id":null}

Here is the code that makes the request:

HttpWebRequest webRequest = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("http://127.0.0.1:8332");
webRequest.Credentials = new NetworkCredential("blah", "blahblah");
/// important, otherwise the service can't desirialse your request properly
webRequest.ContentType = "application/json-rpc";
webRequest.Method = "POST";

JObject joe = new JObject();
joe.Add(new JProperty("jsonrpc", "1.0"));

// serialize json for the request
string s = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(joe);
byte[] byteArray = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(s);
webRequest.ContentLength = byteArray.Length;
Stream dataStream = webRequest.GetRequestStream();
dataStream.Write(byteArray, 0, byteArray.Length);
dataStream.Close();

WebResponse webResponse = webRequest.GetResponse();