System.Net.WebException HTTP status code

Question

Maybe something like this...

try
{
    // ...
}
catch (WebException ex)
{
    if (ex.Status == WebExceptionStatus.ProtocolError)
    {
        var response = ex.Response as HttpWebResponse;
        if (response != null)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("HTTP Status Code: " + (int)response.StatusCode);
        }
        else
        {
            // no http status code available
        }
    }
    else
    {
        // no http status code available
    }
}

By using the null-conditional operator (?.) you can get the HTTP status code with a single line of code:

 HttpStatusCode? status = (ex.Response as HttpWebResponse)?.StatusCode;

The variable status will contain the HttpStatusCode. When the there is a more general failure like a network error where no HTTP status code is ever sent then status will be null. In that case you can inspect ex.Status to get the WebExceptionStatus.

If you just want a descriptive string to log in case of a failure you can use the null-coalescing operator (??) to get the relevant error:

string status = (ex.Response as HttpWebResponse)?.StatusCode.ToString()
    ?? ex.Status.ToString();

If the exception is thrown as a result of a 404 HTTP status code the string will contain "NotFound". On the other hand, if the server is offline the string will contain "ConnectFailure" and so on.

(And for anybody that wants to know how to get the HTTP substatus code. That is not possible. It is a Microsoft IIS concept that is only logged on the server and never sent to the client.)

(I do realise the question is old, but it's among the top hits on Google.)

A common situation where you want to know the response code is in exception handling. As of C# 7, you can use pattern matching to actually only enter the catch clause if the exception matches your predicate:

catch (WebException ex) when (ex.Response is HttpWebResponse response)
{
     doSomething(response.StatusCode)
}

This can easily be extended to further levels, such as in this case where the WebException was actually the inner exception of another (and we're only interested in 404):

catch (StorageException ex) when (ex.InnerException is WebException wex && wex.Response is HttpWebResponse r && r.StatusCode == HttpStatusCode.NotFound)

Finally: note how there's no need to re-throw the exception in the catch clause when it doesn't match your criteria, since we don't enter the clause in the first place with the above solution.

this works only if WebResponse is a HttpWebResponse.

try
{
    ...
}
catch (System.Net.WebException exc)
{
    var webResponse = exc.Response as System.Net.HttpWebResponse;
    if (webResponse != null && 
        webResponse.StatusCode == System.Net.HttpStatusCode.Unauthorized)
    {
        MessageBox.Show("401");
    }
    else
        throw;
}