what's a good/proper way to check whether a Web API is available?

Question

I have an application which gets data from an API:

string jDoc = webclient.DownloadString(url);

Before I make this call, however, I need to make sure the API is available.

How would I go about doing this?

Should I just use a TRY/CATCH block or is there a better way of doing this?

Answer 1

A Web API is like any other web page, so this comes down to "How do I see if a webpage is responding?"

As per the documentation, sure, just use try/catch. If there's a WebException, and you're sure the address is valid, then there was some issue in making your query. You can check the Response and Status properties of the WebException to learn more.