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powershellconnection-timeoutinvoke-webrequest

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

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?

output from Invoke-WebRequest

$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!"}
}
Solution

  • 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
#>