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.
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.
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.
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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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https://www.loggly.com/blog/http-status-code-diagram/
That’s still a 4xx situation.