If you need to verify a web address, it’s natural to look into Invoke-WebRequest, capturing the results and check the StatusCode if the request was successful. There is just one problem…
If the URI is invalid, Invoke-WebRequest throws a terminating error, and no amount of -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue will stop it from doing this.
I got fed up with having to code around this so I decided to write a helper function that “fixes” this problem.
It will take a string or a URI object as input and the output is a boolean; either True or False, similar to how Test-Path works.
There is nothing fancy going on here, just working around a quirk/bug in Invoke-WebRequest, but if you find a bug, or have an idea for a new feature you would like me to add, please let me know in the comments below.
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function Test-WebRequest { | |
<# | |
.SYNOPSIS | |
Test web request. | |
.DESCRIPTION | |
This function can be used to test a web request to a URI. It functions similarly to Test-Path and will either return | |
True or False. | |
.EXAMPLE | |
Test-WebRequest 'google.com' | |
This should return True. | |
.EXAMPLE | |
Test-WebRequest 'google.com/api' | |
This should return False. | |
.NOTES | |
Author: Øyvind Kallstad | |
Version: 1.0 | |
Date: 20.09.2016 | |
.OUTPUTS | |
System.Boolean | |
.INPUTS | |
System.String | |
System.Uri | |
.LINK | |
https://communary.net/ | |
#> | |
[CmdletBinding()] | |
param ( | |
# Specifies the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) of the resource to test. | |
[Parameter()] | |
[uri] $Uri, | |
# Specifies a user account that has permission to send the request. | |
[Parameter()] | |
[PSCredential] $Credential, | |
# Specifies how long the request can be pending before it times out. Enter value in seconds. | |
# The default value, 0, specifies an indefinite time-out. | |
[Parameter()] | |
[int32] $TimeoutSec = 0 | |
) | |
try { | |
$result = Invoke-WebRequest –Uri $Uri –Method Head –Credential $Credential –TimeoutSec $TimeoutSec | |
} | |
catch { | |
$result = $null | |
} | |
if ($result.StatusCode -eq 200) { | |
Write-Output $true | |
} | |
else { | |
Write-Output $false | |
} | |
} |