How to get status code from webclient?

I am using the WebClient class to post some data to a web form. I would like to get the response status code of the form submission. So far I've found out how to get the status code if there is a exception

Catch wex As WebException
        If TypeOf wex.Response Is HttpWebResponse Then
          msgbox(DirectCast(wex.Response, HttpWebResponse).StatusCode)
            End If
       

However if the form is submitted successfully and no exception is thrown then I won't know the status code(200,301,302,...)

Is there some way to get the status code when there is no exceptions thrown?

PS: I prefer not to use httpwebrequest/httpwebresponse

You can check if the error is of type WebException and then inspect the response code;

if (e.Error.GetType().Name == "WebException")
{
   WebException we = (WebException)e.Error;
   HttpWebResponse response = (System.Net.HttpWebResponse)we.Response;
   if (response.StatusCode==HttpStatusCode.NotFound)
      System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine("Not found!");
}

or

try
{
    // send request
}
catch (WebException e)
{
    // check e.Status as above etc..
}

There is a way to do it using reflection. It works with .NET 4.0. It accesses a private field and may not work in other versions of .NET without modifications.

I have no idea why Microsoft did not expose this field with a property.

private static int GetStatusCode(WebClient client, out string statusDescription)
{
    FieldInfo responseField = client.GetType().GetField("m_WebResponse", BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.NonPublic);

    if (responseField != null)
    {
        HttpWebResponse response = responseField.GetValue(client) as HttpWebResponse;

        if (response != null)
        {
            statusDescription = response.StatusDescription;
            return (int)response.StatusCode;
        }
    }

    statusDescription = null;
    return 0;
}

If you are using .Net 4.0 (or less):

class BetterWebClient : WebClient
{
        private WebRequest _Request = null;

        protected override WebRequest GetWebRequest(Uri address)
        {
            this._Request = base.GetWebRequest(address);
            
            if (this._Request is HttpWebRequest)
            {
                ((HttpWebRequest)this._Request).AllowAutoRedirect = false;
            }

            return this._Request;
        } 

        public HttpStatusCode StatusCode()
        {
            HttpStatusCode result;

            if (this._Request == null)
            {
                throw (new InvalidOperationException("Unable to retrieve the status 
                       code, maybe you haven't made a request yet."));
            }

            HttpWebResponse response = base.GetWebResponse(this._Request) 
                                       as HttpWebResponse;

            if (response != null)
            {
                result = response.StatusCode;
            }
            else
            {
                throw (new InvalidOperationException("Unable to retrieve the status 
                       code, maybe you haven't made a request yet."));
            }

            return result;
        }
    }

If you are using .Net 4.5.X or newer, switch to HttpClient:

var response = await client.GetAsync("http://www.contoso.com/");
var statusCode = response.StatusCode;

Tried it out. ResponseHeaders do not include status code.

If I'm not mistaken, WebClient is capable of abstracting away multiple distinct requests in a single method call (e.g. correctly handling 100 Continue responses, redirects, and the like). I suspect that without using HttpWebRequest and HttpWebResponse, a distinct status code may not be available.

It occurs to me that, if you are not interested in intermediate status codes, you can safely assume the final status code is in the 2xx (successful) range, otherwise, the call would not be successful.

The status code unfortunately isn't present in the ResponseHeaders dictionary.

Erik's answer doesn't work on Windows Phone as is. The following does:

class WebClientEx : WebClient
{
    private WebResponse m_Resp = null;

    protected override WebResponse GetWebResponse(WebRequest Req, IAsyncResult ar)
    {
        try
        {
            this.m_Resp = base.GetWebResponse(request);
        }
        catch (WebException ex)
        {
            if (this.m_Resp == null)
                this.m_Resp = ex.Response;
        }
        return this.m_Resp;
    }

    public HttpStatusCode StatusCode
    {
        get
        {
            if (m_Resp != null && m_Resp is HttpWebResponse)
                return (m_Resp as HttpWebResponse).StatusCode;
            else
                return HttpStatusCode.OK;
        }
    }
}

At least it does when using OpenReadAsync; for other xxxAsync methods, careful testing would be highly recommended. The framework calls GetWebResponse somewhere along the code path; all one needs to do is capture and cache the response object.

The fallback code is 200 in this snippet because genuine HTTP errors - 500, 404, etc - are reported as exceptions anyway. The purpose of this trick is to capture non-error codes, in my specific case 304 (Not modified). So the fallback assumes that if the status code is somehow unavailable, at least it's a non-erroneous one.

You should use

if (e.Status == WebExceptionStatus.ProtocolError)
{
   HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)ex.Response;             
   if (response.StatusCode == HttpStatusCode.NotFound)
      System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine("Not found!");
}

This is what I use for expanding WebClient functionality. StatusCode and StatusDescription will always contain the most recent response code/description.

                /// <summary>
                /// An expanded web client that allows certificate auth and 
                /// the retrieval of status' for successful requests
                /// </summary>
                public class WebClientCert : WebClient
                {
                    private X509Certificate2 _cert;
                    public WebClientCert(X509Certificate2 cert) : base() { _cert = cert; }
                    protected override WebRequest GetWebRequest(Uri address)
                    {
                        HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)base.GetWebRequest(address);
                        if (_cert != null) { request.ClientCertificates.Add(_cert); }
                        return request;
                    }
                    protected override WebResponse GetWebResponse(WebRequest request)
                    {
                        WebResponse response = null;
                        response = base.GetWebResponse(request);
                        HttpWebResponse baseResponse = response as HttpWebResponse;
                        StatusCode = baseResponse.StatusCode;
                        StatusDescription = baseResponse.StatusDescription;
                        return response;
                    }
                    /// <summary>
                    /// The most recent response statusCode
                    /// </summary>
                    public HttpStatusCode StatusCode { get; set; }
                    /// <summary>
                    /// The most recent response statusDescription
                    /// </summary>
                    public string StatusDescription { get; set; }
                }

Thus you can do a post and get result via:

            byte[] response = null;
            using (WebClientCert client = new WebClientCert())
            {
                response = client.UploadValues(postUri, PostFields);
                HttpStatusCode code = client.StatusCode;
                string description = client.StatusDescription;
                //Use this information
            }

Just in case someone else needs an F# version of the above described hack.

open System
open System.IO
open System.Net

type WebClientEx() =
     inherit WebClient ()
     [<DefaultValue>] val mutable m_Resp : WebResponse
     
     override x.GetWebResponse (req: WebRequest ) =
        x.m_Resp <- base.GetWebResponse(req)
        (req :?> HttpWebRequest).AllowAutoRedirect <- false;
        x.m_Resp
     
     override x.GetWebResponse (req: WebRequest , ar: IAsyncResult  ) =
        x.m_Resp <- base.GetWebResponse(req, ar)
        (req :?> HttpWebRequest).AllowAutoRedirect <- false;
        x.m_Resp

     member x.StatusCode with get() : HttpStatusCode = 
            if not (obj.ReferenceEquals (x.m_Resp, null)) && x.m_Resp.GetType() = typeof<HttpWebResponse> then
                (x.m_Resp :?> HttpWebResponse).StatusCode
            else
                HttpStatusCode.OK

let wc = new WebClientEx()
let st = wc.OpenRead("http://www.stackoverflow.com")
let sr = new StreamReader(st)
let res = sr.ReadToEnd()
wc.StatusCode
sr.Close()
st.Close()

You should be able to use the "client.ResponseHeaders[..]" call, see this link for examples of getting stuff back from the response

You can try this code to get HTTP status code from WebException or from OpenReadCompletedEventArgs.Error. It works in Silverlight too because SL does not have WebExceptionStatus.ProtocolError defined.

HttpStatusCode GetHttpStatusCode(System.Exception err)
{
    if (err is WebException)
    {
        WebException we = (WebException)err;
        if (we.Response is HttpWebResponse)
        {
            HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)we.Response;
            return response.StatusCode;
        }
    }
    return 0;
}