I prefer simplicity and using the first example but I’d be happy to hear other options. Here’s a few examples:

HTTP/1.1 403 POST /endpoint
{ "message": "Unauthorized access" }

HTTP/1.1 403 POST /endpoint
Unauthorized access (no json)

HTTP/1.1 403 POST /endpoint
{ "error": "Unauthorized access" }

HTTP/1.1 403 POST /endpoint
{
  "code": "UNAUTHORIZED",
  "message": "Unauthorized access",
}

HTTP/1.1 200 (🤡) POST /endpoint
{
  "error": true,
  "message": "Unauthorized access",
}

HTTP/1.1 403 POST /endpoint
{
  "status": 403,
  "code": "UNAUTHORIZED",
  "message": "Unauthorized access",
}

Or your own example.

  • FizzyOrange@programming.dev
    13·
    4 months ago

    I use this big expensive simulator called Questa, and if there’s an error during the simulation it prints Errors: 1, Warnings: 0 and then exits with EXIT_SUCCESS (0)! I tried to convince them that this is wrong but they’re like “but it successfully simulated the error”. 🤦🏻‍♂️

    We end up parsing the output which is very dumb but also seems to be industry standard in the silicon industry unfortunately (hardware people are not very good at software engineering).