• RizzoTheSmall@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    I know an architect who designs APIs this way. Also includes a status code in the response object because why have one status code when you can have two, potentially contradictory, status codes?

    • boonhet@lemm.ee
      0·
      3 months ago

      I inherited a project where it was essentially impossible to get anything other than 200 OK. Trying to use a private endpoint without logging in? 200 OK unauthorized. Sent gibberish instead of actual request body format? 200 OK bad request. Database connection down? You get the point…

    • ByteJunk@lemmy.world
      0·
      3 months ago

      I may have run in your acquaintance work, stuff along the lines of

      200 OK

      { error_code: s23, error_msg: "An error was encountered when performing the operation" }

      If you happen to run into him, kindly tackle him in the groin for me.

      Thanks!

      • arendjr@programming.dev
        0·
        3 months ago

        Well, looking at your example, I think a good case can even be made for it.

        “s23” doesn’t look like an HTTP status code, so including it can make total sense. After all, there’s plenty of reasons why you could want custom error codes that don’t really align with HTTP codes, and customised error messages are also a sensible use case for that.

        Of course duplicating the actual HTTP status code in your body is just silly. And if you use custom error codes, it often still makes sense to use the closest matching HTTP status code in addition to it (so yeah, I agree the 200 in your example doesn’t make a lot of sense). But neither of those preclude good reasons for custom codes.

        • Opisek@lemmy.world
          1·
          3 months ago

          Still, 200 should not be returned. If you have your own codes, just return 500 alongside that custom code.

  • renzev@lemmy.world
    12·
    3 months ago

    This is a good practice tho. The HTTP code describes the status of the HTTP operation. Did the server handle it? No? Was the url not found? Did it time out? Was the payload too large? And the JSON describes the result of the backend operation. So 200 OK with error: true means that your HTTP request was all good, but the actual operation bugged out for whatever reason. If you try to indicate errors in the backend with a HTTP error code, you quickly get confused about which codes can happen for what reason.