title: what's a good/proper way to check whether a Web API is available?
body: <p>I have an application which gets data from an API:</p>
  
  <pre><code>string jDoc = webclient.DownloadString(url);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Before I make this call, however, I need to make sure the API is available.</p>
  
  <p>How would I go about doing this?</p>
  
  <p>Should I just use a <code>TRY/CATCH</code> block or is there a better way of doing this?</p>