Question

Let’s say I have a StackOverflow-esque site. I want to post a comment underneath someone’s answer. Two things can happen:

1) The comment post is successful. I return the actual formatted DIV as some JSON response, set the JSON.

{
    "Success": true, 
    "Data": "some escaped html to inject"
}

2) The comment post is unsuccessful. I return the error as the JSON response.

{
    "Success": false, 
    "Data": "You can only post every 15 seconds"
}

Is this the correct way to do things? I notice that StackOverflow is returning Apache 500 Internal error codes when a comment post is unsuccessful, which I find fishy.

Isn’t a 500 Internal error reserved for things that are actually wrong with the server, not just because some comment validation failed?

Answer 1

I agree that using 500 Internal error is a little strange, but there are a multitude of applicable response codes you can use to meet your needs.

There’s a good list here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes

Example:

User isn’t logged in, needs to be logged in to comment. Send: 401 Unauthorized

User is logged in, trying to comment on a closed thread. Send 403 Forbidden or 400 Bad Request.