Reading the HttpStatusCode when the remote server throws an internal error

Question

I’m trying to read the HTTP response code from a remote server but am running into some trouble when it throws an internal server error. In the following code, GetResponse() can throw a WebException when the remote machine returns an error. I’m currently catching the error and assuming it was a HttpStatusCode.InternalServerError but this is often not correct.

var req = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(uri);
HttpStatusCode responseCode;
try
{
  using (var resp = (HttpWebResponse)req.GetResponse())
  {
    responseCode = resp.StatusCode;
  }
}
catch (WebException)
{
  responseCode = HttpStatusCode.InternalServerError;
}

So the question is this: regardless of what errors the remote server is throwing, how can I grab just the remote response code? I need to know which error type it is; is there any way to grab this from the HttpWebResponse without trying to hack around it? Thanks!

Answer 1

Use the web exception which is thrown to get the response, which contains the status code:

catch (WebException e)
{
    HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse) e.Response;
    responseCode = response.StatusCode;
}

I agree it's a bit annoying. I don't know of a way of telling HttpWebRequest to just give you the response without throwing the exception (leaving it to you to check the status code yourself).