Question

I’m writing a JSON service in C# (.ashx file). On a successful request to the service I return some JSON data. If the request fails, either because an exception was thrown (e.g. database timeout) or because the request was wrong in some way (e.g. an ID that doesn’t exist in the database was given as an argument) how should the service respond? What HTTP status codes are sensible, and should I return any data, if any?

I’m anticipating that service will mainly be called from jQuery using the jQuery.form plugin, does jQuery or this plugin have any default way of handling an error response?

EDIT: I’ve decided I’ll use jQuery + .ashx + HTTP [status codes] on success I’ll return JSON but on error I’ll return a string, as it appears that that is what the error option for jQuery.ajax expects.

Answer 1

The HTTP status code you return should depend on the type of error that has occurred. If an ID doesn’t exist in the database, return a 404; if a user doesn’t have enough privileges to make that Ajax call, return a 403; if the database times out before being able to find the record, return a 500 (server error).

jQuery automatically detects such error codes, and runs the callback function that you define in your Ajax call. Documentation: http://api.jquery.com/jQuery.ajax/

Short example of a $.ajax error callback:

$.ajax({   type: 'POST',   url: '/some/resource',   success: function(data, textStatus) {     // Handle success   },   error: function(xhr, textStatus, errorThrown) {     // Handle error   } });