How to get HttpClient returning status code and response body?

You can avoid the BasicResponseHandler, but use the HttpResponse itself to get both status and response as a String.

HttpResponse response = httpClient.execute(get);

// Getting the status code.
int statusCode = response.getStatusLine().getStatusCode();

// Getting the response body.
String responseBody = EntityUtils.toString(response.getEntity());

Don't provide the handler to execute.

Get the HttpResponse object, use the handler to get the body and get the status code from it directly

try (CloseableHttpClient httpClient = HttpClients.createDefault()) {
    final HttpGet httpGet = new HttpGet(GET_URL);

    try (CloseableHttpResponse response = httpClient.execute(httpGet)) {
        StatusLine statusLine = response.getStatusLine();
        System.out.println(statusLine.getStatusCode() + " " + statusLine.getReasonPhrase());
        String responseBody = EntityUtils.toString(response.getEntity(), StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
        System.out.println("Response body: " + responseBody);
    }
}

For quick single calls, the fluent API is useful:

Response response = Request.Get(uri)
        .connectTimeout(MILLIS_ONE_SECOND)
        .socketTimeout(MILLIS_ONE_SECOND)
        .execute();
HttpResponse httpResponse = response.returnResponse();
StatusLine statusLine = httpResponse.getStatusLine();

For older versions of java or httpcomponents, the code might look different.

BasicResponseHandler throws if the status is not 2xx. See its javadoc.

Here is how I would do it:

HttpResponse response = client.execute( get );
int code = response.getStatusLine().getStatusCode();
InputStream body = response.getEntity().getContent();
// Read the body stream

Or you can also write a ResponseHandler starting from BasicResponseHandler source that don't throw when the status is not 2xx.