[SOLVED] PS: Redirecting error output of assignment statement to a variable

PS: Redirecting error output of assignment statement to a variable

I am calling PnP-GetWeb like this:

    [Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.SecurableObject]$Web = Get-PnPWeb -Connection $pnpConnection -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
    if($null -eq $web) {
        throw "Could not get information for: $($pnpConnection.Url)"
    }

but when there is a 403 "Forbidden", it only outputs this to stdout. There is no exception thrown and I don't see a way to capture that error information unless I redirect stdout. It seems I need to capture its error output to a variable instead of to stdout so that I can format the error before logging it.

I this I can capture error output to a variable like this:

$output = Get-PnpWeb -Connection $pnpConnection 2>&1

but how do I both assign $web and $output?

UPDATE:

To clarify, this code is already inside a try/catch block. Sorry for not mentioning that earlier. However, no exception is ever thrown, even without SilentlyContinue.

Also, Get-PnPWeb does return $null when the stdout shows a 403.

Solution

Use -ErrorVariable to assign the error in a variable, here is an example:

try {
    [Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.SecurableObject]$Web =
        Get-PnPWeb -Connection $pnpConnection -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue -ErrorVariable err
    if($null -eq $web) {
        throw "Could not get information for: $($pnpConnection.Url)"
    }
} catch {
    throw $_
}
if ($err) {
    throw $_
}