Question

Out of curiosity, are there any popular standards for returning server side exceptions (and corresponding details) in an API that returns JSON? The exceptions could be anything from uncaught exceptions in the code or thrown exceptions put in place by the developer.

Currently I’m setting the HTTP Status Code according to their Wiki definitions’

My JSON response would look something like this:

HTTP Code: 401

{'error': 'Authentication required.', 'message': 'You must be authenticated to perform that action.'}

Answer 1

You can take a look at JSON-RPC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON-RPC).

In case of success, the response is like this:

{
    "result": ...(returned data)...
    ...
}

and in case of error, the response is like that:

{
    "error": ...(error details)...
    ...
}

When the error occured, “error” property must be present and “result” property must not be returned. In case there was no error, “error” property must not be set. This way you can distinguish errors from successful responses based solely on the content of the response, without the need to check the headers (like response codes).