Reporting an error from a POST Web Service

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+4 Q:

Reporting an error from a POST Web Service

I'm developing a web service (in asp.net) and I would like to have each web method report to whoever called it when an internal error occurs - for example when input validation has failed.

When I expose my web service with SOAP such errors can be reported by raising a SoapException. But what if I expose my web service with plain POST (aka Http-Post)? Other than returning a 500 Error HTTP status code, is there a standard for reporting errors or raising exceptions in this case?

+1 A:

I've always just returned the 500 status code, along with a textual description of the error. Just make sure it's documented so the client can handle it correctly.

Marc Charbonneau 2009-01-15 22:22:58

+2 A:

Change the response object to contain a status filed, and error message (or only error message, and check at the receiver if empty), and set it properly instead of throwing an exception.

Sunny 2009-01-15 22:49:19

Thanks for the answer - I was actually trying to avoid return a response object because that's not standard. I'd have to "invent" my own response object and a set of error codes for it to contain. I'm looking for an existing standard or protocol to do this. Might you know of such a thing?

urig 2009-01-16 06:52:50

SOAP is the existing standard, and it has the mechanism to pass exceptions. If you wan to use "non-standard" invoking like POST, you need non-standard solution. When you use POST, for the outside world this is a "normal" page request, with XML response. So you need to put the status there ...

Sunny 2009-01-19 16:26:18

... or return an error code (500), and in the body of the response put the error message.

Sunny 2009-01-19 16:27:01

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Reporting an error from a POST Web Service

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