PowerShell, how to handle a page timeout from an Invoke-WebRequest? - powershell

Question

I found that a site that I wanted to parse was down today when I went there to download a file.
The code I ran is:
$url = "https://notepad-plus-plus.org/downloads"
$page = Invoke-WebRequest -uri $url -UseBasicParsing
How can I intercept and handle this?
Is there a way to gracefully time out my request after 2 seconds if it does not get a response (which could be from the site being down or from my own internet having problems)?
What might be the best way to detect if what was returned is "connection timeout junk" as opposed to useful data that I can work with?
$url = "https://notepad-plus-plus.org/downloads" # Final url will be like: # https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/releases/download/v8.4.6/npp.8.4.6.portable.x64.zip
try {
$page = Invoke-WebRequest -uri $url -UseBasicParsing -TimeoutSec 3
}
catch {
if ($_.Exception.Response.StatusCode -band 522) { "bad!"}
}

Answer 1

You should just call the current default error variable exception message/detail.
$url = "https://notepad-plus-plus.org/downloads"
try {$page = Invoke-WebRequest -uri $url -UseBasicParsing -TimeoutSec 3 -ErrorAction Stop}
catch {$Error[0].Exception}
# Results
<#
The operation has timed out.
#>
$url = "https://notepad-plus-plus.org/downloads"
try {$page = Invoke-WebRequest -uri $url -UseBasicParsing -ErrorAction Stop}
catch {$Error[0].Exception}
# Results
<#
The remote server returned an error: (522).
#>
Thus do what you want based on that error message.
$url = "https://notepad-plus-plus.org/downloads"
try {$page = Invoke-WebRequest -uri $url -UseBasicParsing -ErrorAction Stop}
catch
{
If (($Error[0].Exception) -match '522')
{Write-Warning -Message 'Bad stuff happened. Now, go do stuff'}
}
# Results
<#
WARNING: Bad stuff happened. Now, go do stuff
#>
Update
Timeout check.
$timer = [Diagnostics.Stopwatch]::StartNew()
$url = "https://notepad-plus-plus.org/downloads"
try {$page = Invoke-WebRequest -uri $url -UseBasicParsing -TimeoutSec 3 -ErrorAction Stop}
catch
{
$Error[0].Exception
If (($Error[0].Exception) -match 'timed out')
{Write-Warning -Message 'Timeout occurred. Do you want to set a differnet timeout'}
}
$timer.Elapsed.TotalSeconds
# Results
<#
The operation has timed out.
WARNING: Timeout occurred. Do you want to set a differnet timeout
3.0225485
#>