[OSM-dev] Structured error messages from API

[Matthias Julius]

Karl Guggisberg <karl.guggisberg at guggis.ch> writes:

>> Anybody interested in helping to come up with a specification for this?
> I am. How can I help?

OK, it took longer than planned, but I have sifted through the rails
code and collected information about all the APIErrors that could be
emitted by the API (without reading every line of code).  What I found
out I have put on http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/API_v0.6/APIError

Most of those errors should never show up with a bug-free ;-)
application (like duplicate tags).  What I would focus on for now are
the errors that might be shown to the user on a normal basis and that
need to be interpreted by the application to be able to propose a
corrective action to the user like:

 APIAlreadyDeletedError
 APIChangesetAlreadyClosedError
 APIPreconditionFailedError
 APIVersionMismatchError

Could you come up with an XML schema for those?  My understanding of
XML is very basic.

Matthias