launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

["Francis J. Lacoste" <francis.lacoste@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 11-06-16 09:24 AM, Aaron Bentley wrote:
> On 11-06-15 06:05 PM, Francis J. Lacoste wrote:
>> We have a bunch of exceptions that are mapped to 400 but should really
>> be mapped to 404. NoSuchPPA, NoSuchDistroSeries, NoSuchBranch, etc.
> 
> More precision is nice, but I'm a bit worried that 404 may be too
> contextual.  I interpret 404 as "The resource requested at this URL does
> not exist".  So if I'm retrieving a branch that doesn't exist, a 404
> seems like a reasonable status code.  But if I'm supplying a branch that
> doesn't exist as a POST or GET parameter to another URL, e.g. to set a
> series branch, 404 suggests that the URL (i.e. the series), not the
> branch parameter, doesn't exist.
> 

Technically, the URL resource includes the parameters. So 404 makes
sense in that context:

GET /ubuntu?ws:op=getSeries&name_or_version=oneiric -> 200

GET /ubuntu?ws:op=getSeries&name_or_version=foobar -> 404

From an API point of view, I think a NotFound error is less surprising
than a BadRequest. In both cases though, the error message makes it
clear what was the problem.

-- 
Francis J. Lacoste
francis.lacoste@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

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