[DAS2] Re: New problem with content-type header in DAS/2 server responses!

Fri Nov 11 09:24:52 UTC 2005

On 10 Nov 2005, at 19:49, Andrew Dalke wrote:

> Ed:
>
>> Using the HTTP-level error codes can cause problems.
>>
>
>
>> I don't care if status code is indicated with a header like
>> "X-DAS-Status: 200" or with some XML content, or with both.  But I  
>> think  the HTTP status code has to be a separate thing, and will  
>> usually be "400" indicating that the user (sorry, I meant to say  
>> LeRoy) successfully communicated with the DAS server.
>>
>
> Okay, sounds like using HTTP codes for this causes problems in
> practice.
>
> What about returning a different content-type for that case?
>
> 200 Ok
> Content-Type: application/x-das-error
>
> <body>
> Something bad happened.
> </body>

That looks reasonable, but could we add a bit of structure:

     <dasError>
        <faultCode>407</faultCode>
        <description>The sky is falling</description>
     </dasError>

(There's also a possible argument for using textual, rather than  
numeric, error codes -- but it would be good to keep at least one  
part of the error response using a well-defined vocabulary for the  
benefit of clients that want to respond to different error conditions  
in different ways).

             Thomas.