How to validate HTTP status codes for website URLs in Airtable records

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I hit the same issues doing bulk URL validation. Your current approach has a problem - fetch throws exceptions for network errors but not HTTP error codes like 404 or 500. You’ve got to separate network failures from HTTP status responses.

Here’s what worked for me:

const config = input.config();
const websiteUrl = config.websiteUrl;
let responseStatus;

try {
    const apiResponse = await fetch(websiteUrl, {
        method: 'HEAD',
        redirect: 'follow'
    });
    responseStatus = apiResponse.status;
} catch (err) {
    if (err.name === 'TypeError') {
        responseStatus = 'network_error';
    } else {
        responseStatus = 'timeout_error';
    }
}

output.set('responseStatus', responseStatus);

Use HEAD requests instead of GET - much faster since you’re just checking status codes. The redirect: ‘follow’ handles redirects automatically. You’ll get real HTTP codes like 404, 403, 500 instead of just ‘failed’, and network errors get proper labels.