API Practices If You Hate Your Customers

Re:API Practices If You Hate Your Customers by rsynnott on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @06:36PM (#21767942)

> I had to work with an API where the company decided everything should return http code 200 (well, at least all 4XX errors), and give the error code in the JSON response, mixing existing 4XX errors and their own errors.

I've done something like this in the past. There was a (horrible) reason; old versions of Android had terrible built-in HTTP stuff and tended to break on any 'unusual' HTTP responses (for instance, 204), especially where HTTP compression was enabled. By far the safest way to support clunky old Androids turned out be be just return 200 for everything with the real code embedded elsewhere...

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Re:API Practices If You Hate Your Customers by NicoJuicy on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @08:27PM (#21768542)

Ugh, i'd put a gateway in front of it that transformed the status codes to a 200-response.

Instead of building your api according to the default Android client ( ps. Lookup BFF microservices)

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Re:API Practices If You Hate Your Customers by rsynnott on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @08:45PM (#21768612)

It was a while ago, and we were very cost sensitive.

FWIW, I think the last Android phones with these client issues have probably died by now (it got mostly sorted out in 4.3 or so IIRC); this isn't a current concern.

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Re:API Practices If You Hate Your Customers by NicoJuicy on Thursday December 12, 2019 @04:46AM (#21770588)

Just pointing out an alternative that wouldn't break/uglify your api ;)

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