Invoke-WebRequest: Document behaviour on non-success response codes and handling

[vexx32]

Issue Details

As @markekraus mentions in PowerShell/PowerShell#9009, the Invoke-WebRequest cmdlet+ is designed to emit a terminating error when a non-success code is received:

comment:

A non-success HTTP status message throws terminating errors and does not return any output. You must do something like this:

try {
    $response = invoke-WebRequest -Uri $Uri -ErrorAction Stop
    $StatusCode = $Response.StatusCode
} catch {
    $StatusCode = $_.Exception.Response.StatusCode.value__
}

Something along these lines should be added to the documentation to give clear indication of the behaviour and how to handle it appropriately.

Version(s) of document impacted

• Impacts 6.next document
• Impacts 6 document
• Impacts 5.1 document
• Impacts 5.0 document
• Impacts 4.0 document
• Impacts 3.0 document

Reason(s) for not selecting all version of documents

• The documented feature was introduced in selected version of PowerShell
• This issue only shows up in selected version of the document

[markekraus]

note: this is the behavior in all vesions of the cmdlet and not specific to 6+

[vexx32]

Ah, I wasn't aware. Thank you for the clarification! 😊

[qt3m45su0najc7]

Thank you for opening this. I was just writing up the doc enhancement issue today (absolutely true) and found your doc update. It's odd that iwr does not return anything in some cases and only LOTR and Mark knows where to find the corpse.