You can send 4xx errors yourself too. If the client needs to change something about the request, that's a 4xx, like 400 Bad Request. If the server has an error and it's not the client's fault, that's a 5xx like 502 Bad Gateway.

The wikipedia listing of all HTTP codes is quite helpful. People also forget you can send a custom response body with a 4xx or 5xx error. So you can still make a custom JSON error message.

[+] bananoidandroid@feddit.nu 1 points 1 week ago (8 children)

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[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (7 children)

A 2xx means success to its requester. If you have an error in step 6 out of 13 that breaks the resource action, you shouldn't be returning a success.

You might argue what to return and what kind of information to include in the response (like tracking numbers), but it shouldn't be a 2xx and I don't see how a misleading 200 would be more helpful than a 400 bad request.

[+] bananoidandroid@feddit.nu 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

and to just send “Bad request” when it’s a good request - does not make sense

That's when you use a 5xx status, then. The client doesn't care how many other services you reach out to in order to fulfill their request. A 5xx code also covers failures in other parts of the system.

[+] bananoidandroid@feddit.nu -1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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[–] pupbiru@aussie.zone 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

error codes aren’t about who’s at fault… you don’t send a 404 because it’s the users or the servers fault. it’s information… a 404 says something doesn’t exist… it’s nobody’s fault; it just is

a 4xx says the request, if tried again without changes or external intervention, is unlikely to succeed

a 5xx says the request might have been fine but some other problem that you can’t control occurred so may be retried without changes at a later time

these are all standard things that are treated in standard ways by generic HTTP libraries… look at, eg axios: a javascript HTTP library that’s often thinly wrapped to build API clients… a 200 is just passed through as success, where 4xx and 5xx will throw an error: exactly what you’d want if you try to retrieve a non-existent object or submit a malformed payload…

this is standard behaviour for a lot of HTTP libraries, and helps people accidentally write better code - an explosion is better than silence for unhandled exceptions

[+] bananoidandroid@feddit.nu 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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[–] pupbiru@aussie.zone 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Resource not found Data not found (client error). Data not found (server error)

they are all the same thing; there is no useful, practical distinction between them

if we request a list of objects and nothing was found, because we asked for a date when there was no data, its not an error. But i suppose many still just throw around exceptions still instead of handle them properly

it’s an empty array: not found when requesting something specific is an error… that’s different to here is the complete set of 0 objects… like like if you have an array and request an index that doesn’t exist you get an exception, but that doesn’t mean an empty array is exceptional: it is in fact very valid

using an error code for a non-error

well, it is an error though. you have requested a URI for an object that doesn’t exist: it doesn’t matter whether it’s a resource or an individual thing

remember that HTTP youre asking the server for some object matching a URI: please give me the object matching /users/bananoidandroid and /userssssss/bananoidandroid may both not be found for the exact same reason: the object referenced by that string does not exist

here’s the spec definition for 404

The server has not found anything matching the Request-URI. No indication is given of whether the condition is temporary or permanent. The 410 (Gone) status code SHOULD be used if the server knows, through some internally configurable mechanism, that an old resource is permanently unavailable and has no forwarding address. This status code is commonly used when the server does not wish to reveal exactly why the request has been refused, or when no other response is applicable.

when you’re dealing with specs, deciding not to follow them because you feel like they’re wrong is not appropriate… this leads to bugs and issues in compliant tools because they make assumptions about what things mean

200 means the thing that you asked completed successfully

here’s the definition of 200:

The request has succeeded. The information returned with the response is dependent on the method used in the request, for example:

GET an entity corresponding to the requested resource is sent in the response;

HEAD the entity-header fields corresponding to the requested resource are sent in the response without any message-body;

POST an entity describing or containing the result of the action;

TRACE an entity containing the request message as received by the end server.

*edit: when talking about compliant, standard tools the classic example is transparent cache: a GET should not transform the resource and thus a GET with response of 200 can be cached… an API that uses a GET to modify a resource may cause transparent proxies (or CDNs) to significantly mishandle the user request… same goes for 200 vs 4xx and 5xx: proxies know that 200 means what it means and may cache based on that, where 5xx should never be cached and 4xx is probably dependant on which specific 4xx

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