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Bug introduced in 11.0 and persists through 11.3

The original problem is was fixed in V11.2 but since then it returns File[path/to/file/that/does/not/exits] instead of 401 Failure/HTTPResponse like URLRead does.

CASE:3877019 - confirmed

The second one prompts the dialog:

URLRead["https://httpbin.org/status/401", Interactive -> False]

URLDownload["https://httpbin.org/status/401", Interactive -> False]

but both should return 401 HTTPResponse since

ref/URLDownload:

URLDownload takes the options as URLRead.

ref/URLRead

Interactive - True - whether to allow interactive authentication dialogs

Have I missed something? Is there a workaround?

It probably can be narrowed to URLSave broken for "DisplayProxyDialog" -> False, but this is undocumented so I can't complain.

related:

How to omit the authentification dialog during URLRead?

Inconsistent Authorization Dialog (401) handling

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    $\begingroup$ Interestingly enough, there is a symbol URLUtilities`PackageScope`$options, setting which with association <|Interactive -> False|> works for URLRead (you can call it without parameters now and it won't show a dialog), but it doesn't for URLDownload $\endgroup$
    – Stitch
    Commented Apr 12, 2017 at 15:43

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Before it is fixed one can use this quick workaround based on How to get StatusCode without fetching Body/Content in the background:

DialoglessURLDownload =  URLFetch[
    #, "StatusCode", Method -> "HEAD", "DisplayProxyDialog" -> False
] /. (200 :> URLDownload[##]) &

I've decided I will return the status code for any case that isn't 200, that is arguable but URLDownload itself gives non existing File[...] when it fails so I will not try to mimic wrong behavior. This at least gives you a possibility to react appropriately. 

DialoglessURLDownload @ "https://httpbin.org/status/401"

401

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