Powershell - Querying URL with login and returning HTTP Status - powershell

Question

I'm using a standard [System.Net.WebRequest] class to return the HTTP response code of a given URL.
The URL points to an internal web application server, which returns a "401 Unauthorised" error. This is actually OK as the service account running the script doesn't have a valid account to the application. However, I am more interested that the website is responding. However, I assumed that this is a HTTP Response in itself so I could manage this, but instead it returned as a null value.
$HTTP_Request = [System.Net.WebRequest]::Create('http://google.com')
$HTTP_Response = $HTTP_Request.GetResponse()
$HTTP_Status = [int]$HTTP_Response.StatusCode
Exception calling "GetResponse" with "0" argument(s): "The remote
server returned an error: (407) Proxy Authentication Required."
(I'm using Google in this example, which our servers are blocked from accessing external sites).
So I can't get as far as $HTTP_Status = [int]$HTTP_Response.StatusCode in the code because it won't accept 400 errors as a code.
How can I accept a 401 (or 407 in this example) in the query?
Thanks

Answer 1

Got it!
try{
$request = $null
$request = Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "<URL>"
}
catch
{
$request = $_.Exception.Response
}
$StatusCode = [int] $request.StatusCode;
$StatusDescription = $request.StatusDescription;

Answer 2

You could've done:
$HTTP_Request = [System.Net.WebRequest]::Create('http://google.com')
$HTTP_Request.Method = "GET"
$HTTP_Request.Credentials = [System.Net.CredentialCache]::DefaultNetworkCredentials
[System.Net.HttpWebResponse]$HTTP_Response = $HTTP_Request.GetResponse()
Try {
$HTTP_Status = [int]$HTTP_Response.StatusCode
}
Catch {
#handle the error if you like, or not...
}
If ($HTTP_Status -eq 200) {
Write-Host "Good Response"
} Else {
Write-Host "Site Down or Access Denied"
}
# If you got a 404 Not Found, the response will be null so can't be closed
If ($HTTP_Response -eq $null) { } Else { $HTTP_Response.Close() }
You were missing the authentication piece:
$HTTP_Request.Credentials = [System.Net.CredentialCache]::DefaultNetworkCredentials
I re-read your post and because your service account did not have access to the URL you are hitting (which was not actually google.com... you should've put myserver.com...grr), you would never actually get a 200, but always will get an exception. This is a bad practice, because instead of looking for the 200, you would have to always look for the 401 or 407 Unauthorized exception status code specifically, and if the code/response changed to something else, only then is it considered a failure - but technically it always had been a failure, because it never reached the site! It masks potential issues if you intend to go on deliberately using a site your service account doesn't have access to reach. And if your service account was ever granted access, your code would have to be updated.