Catching FULL exception message

Question

Consider   Invoke-WebRequest  sumoApiURL -Headers    Content-Type    application json   -Credential  cred -WebSession  webRequestSession -Method post -Body  sumojson -ErrorAction Stop   This throws the following exception     How can I catch it entirely or at least filter out the  A resource with the same name already exist     Using    Exception GetType   FullName yields     System Net WebException   and    Exception Message gives     The remote server returned an error   400  Bad Request

User · Answer

I keep coming back to these questions trying to figure out where exactly the data I'm interested in is buried in what is truly a monolithic ErrorRecord structure. Almost all answers give piecemeal instructions on how to pull certain bits of data.

But I've found it immensely helpful to dump the entire object with ConvertTo-Json so that I can visually see LITERALLY EVERYTHING in a comprehensible layout.

    try {
        Invoke-WebRequest...
    }
    catch {
        Write-Host ($_ | ConvertTo-Json)
    }

Use ConvertTo-Json's -Depth parameter to expand deeper values, but use extreme caution going past the default depth of 2 :P

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft.powershell.utility/convertto-json

User · Answer

Errors and exceptions in PowerShell are structured objects  The error message you see printed on the console is actually a formatted message with information from several elements of the error exception object  You can  re- construct it yourself like this    formatstring     0     1  n 2  n                           CategoryInfo             3  n                           FullyQualifiedErrorId    4  n   fields      InvocationInfo MyCommand Name               ErrorDetails Message               InvocationInfo PositionMessage               CategoryInfo ToString                 FullyQualifiedErrorId   formatstring -f  fields   If you just want the error message displayed in your catch block you can simply echo the current object variable  which holds the error at that point    try           catch            If you need colored output use Write-Host with a formatted string as described above   try           catch           Write-Host -Foreground Red -Background Black   formatstring -f  fields      With that said  usually you don t want to just display the error message as-is in an exception handler  otherwise the -ErrorAction Stop would be pointless   The structured error exception objects provide you with additional information that you can use for better error control  For instance you have    Exception HResult with the actual error number     ScriptStackTrace and    Exception StackTrace  so you can display stacktraces when debugging     Exception InnerException gives you access to nested exceptions that often contain additional information about the error  top level PowerShell errors can be somewhat generic   You can unroll these nested exceptions with something like this    e      Exception  msg    e Message while   e InnerException       e    e InnerException    msg      n     e Message    msg   In your case the information you want to extract seems to be in    ErrorDetails Message  It s not quite clear to me if you have an object or a JSON string there  but you should be able to get information about the types and values of the members of    ErrorDetails by running     ErrorDetails   Get-Member    ErrorDetails   Format-List     If    ErrorDetails Message is an object you should be able to obtain the message string like this      ErrorDetails Message message   otherwise you need to convert the JSON string to an object first      ErrorDetails Message   ConvertFrom-Json   Select-Object -Expand message   Depending what kind of error you re handling  exceptions of particular types might also include more specific information about the problem at hand  In your case for instance you have a WebException which in addition to the error message     Exception Message  contains the actual response from the server   PS C     e Exception   Get-Member     TypeName  System Net WebException  Name             MemberType Definition ----             ---------- ---------- Equals           Method     bool Equals System Object obj   bool  Exception E    GetBaseException Method     System Exception GetBaseException    System Excep    GetHashCode      Method     int GetHashCode    int  Exception GetHashCode   GetObjectData    Method     void GetObjectData System Runtime Serialization S    GetType          Method     type GetType    type  Exception GetType   ToString         Method     string ToString    string  Exception ToString   Data             Property   System Collections IDictionary Data  get   HelpLink         Property   string HelpLink  get set   HResult          Property   int HResult  get   InnerException   Property   System Exception InnerException  get   Message          Property   string Message  get   Response         Property   System Net WebResponse Response  get   Source           Property   string Source  get set   StackTrace       Property   string StackTrace  get   Status           Property   System Net WebExceptionStatus Status  get   TargetSite       Property   System Reflection MethodBase TargetSite  get    which provides you with information like this   PS C     e Exception Response  IsMutuallyAuthenticated   False Cookies                      Headers                    Keep-Alive  Connection  Content-Length  Content-T     SupportsHeaders           True ContentLength             198 ContentEncoding           ContentType               text html  charset iso-8859-1 CharacterSet              iso-8859-1 Server                    Apache 2 4 10 LastModified              17 07 2016 14 39 29 StatusCode                NotFound StatusDescription         Not Found ProtocolVersion           1 1 ResponseUri               http   www example com  Method                    POST IsFromCache               False  Since not all exceptions have the exact same set of properties you may want to use specific handlers for particular exceptions   try           catch  System ArgumentException        handle argument exceptions   catch  System Net WebException        handle web exceptions   catch       handle all other exceptions     If you have operations that need to be done regardless of whether an error occured or not  cleanup tasks like closing a socket or a database connection  you can put them in a finally block after the exception handling   try           catch           finally       cleanup operations go here

User · Answer

The following worked well for me  try       asdf   catch        string err        Out-String    write-host  string err   The result of this is the following as a string instead of an ErrorRecord object  asdf   The term  asdf  is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet  function  script file  or operable program  Check the spelling of the name  or if a path was included  verify that the path is correct and try again  At C  Users TASaif Desktop tmp catch exceptions ps1 2 char 5       asdf                  CategoryInfo            ObjectNotFound   asdf String      CommandNotFoundException       FullyQualifiedErrorId   CommandNotFoundException

User · Answer

You can add   -ErrorVariable errvar   And then look in  errvar

User · Answer

I found it   Simply print out  Error 0  for the last error message

[powershell] Catching FULL exception message

Examples related to powershell

Examples related to exception

Examples related to exception-handling