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Asked: 2026-05-11T19:01:14+00:00

I’m looking for guidance on good practices when it comes to return errors from

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I’m looking for guidance on good practices when it comes to return errors from a REST API. I’m working on a new API so I can take it any direction right now. My content type is XML at the moment, but I plan to support JSON in future.

I am now adding some error cases, like for instance a client attempts to add a new resource but has exceeded his storage quota. I am already handling certain error cases with HTTP status codes (401 for authentication, 403 for authorization and 404 for plain bad request URIs). I looked over the blessed HTTP error codes but none of the 400-417 range seems right to report application specific errors. So at first I was tempted to return my application error with 200 OK and a specific XML payload (ie. Pay us more and you’ll get the storage you need!) but I stopped to think about it and it seems to soapy (/shrug in horror). Besides it feels like I’m splitting the error responses into distinct cases, as some are http status code driven and other are content driven.

So what is the industry recommendations? Good practices (please explain why!) and also, from a client pov, what kind of error handling in the REST API makes life easier for the client code?

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  1. Editorial Team

    So at first I was tempted to return my application error with 200 OK and a specific XML payload (ie. Pay us more and you’ll get the storage you need!) but I stopped to think about it and it seems to soapy (/shrug in horror).

    I wouldn’t return a 200 unless there really was nothing wrong with the request. From RFC2616, 200 means “the request has succeeded.”

    If the client’s storage quota has been exceeded (for whatever reason), I’d return a 403 (Forbidden):

    The server understood the request, but is refusing to fulfill it. Authorization will not help and the request SHOULD NOT be repeated. If the request method was not HEAD and the server wishes to make public why the request has not been fulfilled, it SHOULD describe the reason for the refusal in the entity. If the server does not wish to make this information available to the client, the status code 404 (Not Found) can be used instead.

    This tells the client that the request was OK, but that it failed (something a 200 doesn’t do). This also gives you the opportunity to explain the problem (and its solution) in the response body.

    What other specific error conditions did you have in mind?

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