[OSM-dev] Inconsistent server error replies

Tom Hughes tom at compton.nu
Sun Sep 7 13:19:33 BST 2008


Till Harbaum / Lists wrote:

> 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?

A single line text message is clearly not appropriate for a 404 caused 
by using the wrong URL though as we have no idea if that came from a web 
browser or a program using the API and in the web browser case we want 
to send an HTML response.

In fact it's far more likely that it is a web browser as any program 
that is sending the wrong URL is presumably only ever going to do so for 
a short period while it is in development while a web user can type in 
the wrong URL at any time.

To be honest I wouldn't expect a program to look at the body - just the 
response code and string and the Error header.

If you want to improve our error handling though then please do feel 
free - I'm sure you know where the repository is.

Tom

-- 
Tom Hughes (tom at compton.nu)
http://www.compton.nu/




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