bcquality/microsoft/knowledge/web-services/check-http-status-before-consuming-response-body.md

bc-version	domain	keywords	technologies	countries	application-area
all	web-services	httpclient httpresponsemessage issuccessstatuscode httpstatuscode response-body json	al	w1	all

Check HTTP status before consuming the response body

Description

A successful AL HttpClient call only confirms that the platform completed the HTTP exchange. The server can still return 4xx or 5xx, often with an error document whose shape differs from the expected success payload. Parsing that body as business data can produce misleading parse errors, incomplete records, or decisions based on an error response.

Best Practice

After handling any platform or transport failure, check HttpResponseMessage.IsSuccessStatusCode() or the expected HttpStatusCode() before interpreting the response body as a success payload. Handle non-success status explicitly and include safe diagnostic context when appropriate. A bounded error body may be read for diagnostics, but it must not enter the success parsing path.

See sample: check-http-status-before-consuming-response-body.good.al.

Anti Pattern

Checking only the Boolean result of Get, Post, Put, Delete, or Send and then parsing Response.Content() as the expected payload. The Boolean can be true for any HTTP status, including authentication failures, throttling, validation errors, and server failures.

See sample: check-http-status-before-consuming-response-body.bad.al.

References

• HttpResponseMessage.IsSuccessStatusCode method
• HttpClient data type