I'm trying to understand which Http Status Code to use in the following use case
The user tries to do a GET on an endpoint with an input ID.
The requested data is not available in the database.
Should the service send back:
404 - Not Found
As the data is NOT FOUND in the database
400 - Bad Request
As the data in the input request is not valid or present in the db
200 - OK with null response
200 - OK with an error message
In this case we can use a standard error message, with a contract that spans across all the 200 OK responses (like below).
BaseResponse {
Errors [{
Message: "Data Not Found"
}],
Response: null
}
Which is the right (or standard) approach to follow?
Thanks in advance.
Which is the right (or standard) approach to follow?
If you are following the REST API Architecture, you should follow these guidelines:
400 The request could not be understood by the server due to incorrect syntax. The client SHOULD NOT repeat the request without modifications.
It means that you received a bad request data, like an ID in alphanumeric format when you want only numeric IDs. Typically it refers to bad input formats or security checks (like an input array with a maxLength)
404 The server can not find the requested resource.
The ID format is valid and you can't find the resource in the data source.
If you don't follow any standard architecture, you should define how you want to manage these cases and share your thought with the team and customers.
In many legacy applications, an HTTP status 200 with errors field is very common since very-old clients were not so good to manage errors.
Related
I have some records in the database that may or may not have some information for a certain column, and that's OK.
If a consumer of the endpoint runs into one of these records, I'd like to return "NoContent", because, well, there's No Content for that record that we can execute on. BUT ... I'd like to give them a message why, as there are two distinct reasons.
When looking at other status codes, this works:
return Accepted("I SEE THIS STRING!");
It actually shows up in the Response Header as the field location (I think, don't make me run this project again!)
This works for say Internal Server error:
return StatusCode(500, "I SEE THIS TOO!");
But, for NoContent there is no constructor like Accepted, where you can pass an object. Also, this shows me no string whatsoever:
return StatusCode(204, "WHY CAN'T I SEE THIS STRING?!");
Help!
204 (No Content) returns an HttpResponseMessage with, well, No Content.
If you do have content to return that the user can consume (the two reasons), then you don't have a No Content scenario.
Perhaps an Ok (200) with a custom ContentNotProvided class that holds a message, which can be consumed by the client, will do the trick?
Alternatively, return a BadRequest (400) with a message.
I am attempting to create a single opening balances record against an existing employee but keep getting a 400 Bad Request response with this detail...
At least one NZ opening balance item is required in the request
I am following the instructions as per this documentation...
https://developer.xero.com/documentation/api/payrollnz/employeeopeningbalances#post-opening-balances
URL : {DestinationID} is properly replaced with the employee GUIDhttps://api.xero.com/payroll.xro/2.0/employees/{DestinationID}/openingBalances
JSON Body[{"periodEndDate":"2011-01-30T00:00:00","daysPaid":5.00,"unpaidWeeks":0.00,"grossEarnings":1442.31}]
The Xero forums and support is pretty unreliable so I'm posting here in the hopes for a better response.
After some trial and error using the API Explorer that Xero provides I was able to get it working using their example....
I eventually learned that daysPaid and unpaidWeeks must both be integer whole numbers or else it fails.... The error message provided is misleading but this resolves the problem.
I am building an API about email auth code.
Its process is simple.
input random code (client browser)
request with input code. (client browser)
receive the request (server)
scan the code from DB (server)
there is no code matched (server)
return a response with status code.
There are many status code, (2xx, 4xx, 5xx);
but I don't know which status code number is the most proper for this case.
It depends on the semantics you want to give your request. E.g.:
The API should search for items matching the query and return a list of results, like GET /codes?q=4ba69g. Think a "search page". In this case, an empty result [] is a perfectly valid result; nothing was wrong with the query, it just didn't return any matches. That's a 200 OK, or maybe a 204 No Content if you want to omit the empty response body entirely.
The code is treated like a resource, e.g. GET /codes/4ba69g. In this case a missing code would result in a 404 Not Found.
It's an action you want to perform which may fail, e.g. POST /login. If the user supplied the wrong credentials/code and hence the action cannot complete, that's a client-side error and therefore a 400 Bad Request.
I'm contacting the API of my client's store on BigCommerce. I've verified the option set has a bunch of rules associated with it (8 product rules).
When I contact the api with
/api/v2/products/181/rules I get a 204 response.
This seems to be an incorrect response.
I tried then contacting
/api/v2/products/181/rules/count
and I get a response of:
{ count:0 }
How do I get a proper representation of these rules, as the API specification describes?
Thanks for any help you can provide. I'm stuck.
The response indicates that there are no rules associated with the product ID in your request. Are you sure that the option set you're referring to has been assigned to the product ID referenced in your request? It is possible that the option set has rules but the product does not have an option set assigned to it.
I build a simple API for a bookmark manager, where the URL of record should only be stored once. Record 001 with www.example.com already exists beside record 002 with www.stuff.com.
If I update record 002 with the url www.example.com, should I ignore the complete request and send back an error message or is it better to update all valid parts and just send an errror message, that says, that the url/bookmark already exists?
With a PUT, the expectation is that the entire operation will succeed or fail:
The PUT method requests that the state of the target resource be
created or replaced with the state defined by the representation
enclosed in the request message payload. A successful PUT of a given
representation would suggest that a subsequent GET on that same
target resource will result in an equivalent representation being
sent in a 200 (OK) response.
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7231#section-4.3.4
You should send an error for an invalid PUT (since the URL already exists and cannot be in two records at the same time) and not apply any of the other updates.
For partial updates you might consider a PATCH, but in this case I don't think you would go this direction since:
If the entire patch document
cannot be successfully applied, then the server MUST NOT apply any of
the changes.
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5789