[OSM-dev] Inconsistent server error replies

Sun Sep 7 12:51:09 BST 2008

Hi,

the replies the server is sending on uploads aren't very consistent. E.g. using a 
wrong url returns a 404 with content:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
   "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<body>
  <h1>File not found</h1>
  <p>Change this error message for pages not found in public/404.html</p>
</body>
</html>

using a wrong username returns a 401 with content:

Couldn't authenticate you

Since i'd like to have mosmed do some useful output in case of errors during the upload process,
it's rather ugly to have to cope with these different cases (despite the fact that the 404 message
seems to be just the default message of the server and should imho be changed, anyway). 

I can of course ignore these completely and just do an own clear text message based on the 
return code only. But it's imho nicer to have the sever explain the issue in plain text as this allows
for more flexibility and e.g. more exact error messages.

How can this be solved? I'd really prefer simple single line text replies for all errors, just like in the
401 case. Any objections? How can this be done? Who can do this?

Regards,
  Till