How to ignore 401 unauthorized error from webrequest to get website status

Question

I am writing an application to check the status of some internal web applications. Some of these applications use Windows authentication. When I use this code to check the status, it throws The remote server returned an error: (401) Unauthorized.. Which is understandable because I haven't provided any credentials to the webiste so I am not authorized.

WebResponse objResponse = null;
WebRequest objRequest = HttpWebRequest.Create(website);
objResponse = objRequest.GetResponse();

Is there a way to ignore the 401 error without doing something like this?

WebRequest objRequest = HttpWebRequest.Create(website);

try
{
    objResponse = objRequest.GetResponse();
}
catch (WebException ex)
{
    //Catch and ignore 401 Unauthorized errors because this means the site is up, the app just doesn't have authorization to use it.
    if (!ex.Message.Contains("The remote server returned an error: (401) Unauthorized."))
    {
        throw;
    }                    
}

Answer 1

I would suggest to try this:

        try
        {
            objResponse = objRequest.GetResponse() as HttpWebResponse;
        }
        catch (WebException ex)
        {
            objResponse = ex.Response as HttpWebResponse;
        }
        finally

The WebException has the response all information you want.

Answer 2

When the server is down or unreachable you will get a timeout exception. I know that the only way to handle that is with a try/catch.

I'm quite sure this is the case for most errors (401/404/501), so: No, you can't ignore (prevent) the exceptions but you will have to handle them. They are the only way to get most of the StatusCodes your App is looking for.