Ah, the old http status code. Very nice. I recently built my first pro-grade web service and had some problems figuring out the status codes. Here are some tips from my friend happyfrenchy2:
Usually I write my rest service so that a problem with the parameters (wrong ID, not enough params, etc) returns a 400 (bad request), a auth failure (wrong signature) returns a 403 (forbidden) and an internal problem (couldn’t access DB for instance) returns a 503 (server error). Return code 500 should be when the error happens before your code was even reached (like the server or web-server is down).
Very helpful. This is what that looks like, in the create method of the /installs web service:
def create
respond_to do |format|
format.xml {
install = OnInstall.new do |i|
i.ip_address = request.remote_ip
i.mac_address = params[:mac_address]
i.on_dvd_id = params[:on_dvd_id].to_i
i.on_dvd_number = params[:on_dvd_number]
i.on_dvd_set_id = params[:on_dvd_set_id].to_i
i.on_game_id = params[:on_game_id].to_i
end
ts_param = params[:redacted]
hash_to_match = params[:redacted]
begin
#FK validations
test = OnDvd.find(install.on_dvd_id)
test = OnDvdSet.find(install.on_dvd_set_id)
test = OnGame.find(install.on_game_id)
#validate md5 hash
live_matcher = "redacted"
digest = Digest::MD5.hexdigest(live_matcher)
if digest.upcase == hash_to_match.upcase
if install.save
headers['location'] = on_install_path(install.id)
render :nothing => true, :status => "201 Created"
else
render :xml => install.errors.to_xml, :status => "400 Bad Request"
end
else
render :xml => "Your s param hash did not match the POST fields.", :status => "403 Forbidden"
end
rescue Exception => e
render :xml => e.message, :status => "503 Server Error"
end
}
format.html {if current_user == :false then redirect_to home_url else super end}
end
end
