Read Azure DocumentDB document that might not exist

Sadly there is no other way, either you handle the exception or you make 2 calls, if you pick the second path, here is one performance-driven way of checking for document existence:

public bool ExistsDocument(string id)
{
    var client = new DocumentClient(DatabaseUri, DatabaseKey);
    var collectionUri = UriFactory.CreateDocumentCollectionUri("dbName", "collectioName");
    var query = client.CreateDocumentQuery<Microsoft.Azure.Documents.Document>(collectionUri, new FeedOptions() { MaxItemCount = 1 });
    return query.Where(x => x.Id == id).Select(x=>x.Id).AsEnumerable().Any(); //using Linq
}

The client should be shared among all your DB-accesing methods, but I created it there to have a auto-suficient example.

The new FeedOptions () {MaxItemCount = 1} will make sure the query will be optimized for 1 result (we don't really need more).

The Select(x=>x.Id) will make sure no other data is returned, if you don't specify it and the document exists, it will query and return all it's info.

You're specifically querying for a given document, and ReadDocumentAsync will throw that DocumentClientException when it can't find the specific document (returning a 404 in the status code). This is documented here. By catching the exception (and seeing that it's a 404), you wouldn't need two round trips.

To get around dealing with this exception, you'd need to make a query instead of a discrete read, by using CreateDocumentQuery(). Then, you'll simply get a result set you can enumerate through (even if that result set is empty). For example:

var collLink = UriFactory.CreateDocumentCollectionUri(databaseId, collectionId);
var querySpec = new SqlQuerySpec { <querytext> };

var itr = client.CreateDocumentQuery(collLink, querySpec).AsDocumentQuery();
var response = await itr.ExecuteNextAsync<Document>();

foreach (var doc in response.AsEnumerable())
{
    // ...
}

With this approach, you'll just get no responses. In your specific case, where you'll be adding a WHERE clause to query a specific document by its id, you'll either get zero results or one result.