Question

I have the following situation. I am calling some web api to login to a certain server. The call looks like that:
webhost/login?username=[e-mail]&password=alin
The return is always an xml like:

<response>
 <error>invalid user</error>
</response>

or

<response>
 <token>XXXXXXX</token>
</response>

So, if I call this api with the wrong credentials, the page return with a 401 http status, and then at this line

HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();

it raise an error and it jumps in catch block. (of course) The thing is, the next line

stream = response.GetResponseStream();

never get to happen so I will never get to read the returned xml , including the error message inside it. Still, if i just paste the link in browser, the page and teh xml gets loaded

Why does the browser loads the xml and my response component does not. by the way , i am doing this in C#

Thanks

Stream stream = null;
try 
{
    HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(finalURL);
    HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
    stream = response.GetResponseStream();
}  
catch(Exception ex)
{
    string x = ex.Message;
}

Answer 1

Well you’re not trying to look at the response.

If you catch a specific exception (as you should – catching Exception is a bad idea in most cases) you could get at the response data:

catch (WebException e)
{
    WebResponse response = e.Response;
    // TODO: Check whether the status code is one you can handle
    // Get the data from here...
}

Note that you should have a using statement for your HttpWebResponse in the non-failure condition too, otherwise you’ll end up leaving resources open.