title: Retrieve content from 404 error using HttpWebRequest
body: <p>This is similar to a question asked here: <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10311582/httpwebrequest-get-error-content">httpWebRequest - get error content</a>
  but I'm hoping to provide some more information in hope of an answer.</p>
  
  <p>I am integrating with the LinkedIn API using C#. When I make an <strong>invalid</strong> call to the API, it can return a HTTP response like such (from Fiddler):</p>
  
  <pre><code>HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
  Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1
  x-li-request-id: VL2EER2ROJ
  Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2012 08:52:59 GMT
  Vary: *
  x-li-format: xml
  Content-Type: text/xml;charset=UTF-8
  Content-Length: 266
  
  &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?&gt;
  &lt;error&gt;
    &lt;status&gt;404&lt;/status&gt;
    &lt;timestamp&gt;1350377580000&lt;/timestamp&gt;
    &lt;request-id&gt;VL2EER2ROJ&lt;/request-id&gt;
    &lt;error-code&gt;0&lt;/error-code&gt;
    &lt;message&gt;Could not find member {/people/XXXXXX}&lt;/message&gt;
  &lt;/error&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I would specifically like to get at the error xml, however HttpWebRequest seems to simply throw the exception and then has nothing to do with the content. In my debugger, I can see that the content length is 266, but any attempt to call <code>(System.Net.WebException).Response.GetResponseStream()</code> results in a <code>stream was not readable</code> exception.</p>
  
  <p>This method of returning error messages within a non 200 HTTP status response seems quite popular in web APIs - I'm hoping there is a way to get at these responses...</p>