Handling API Errors 🛠️❌

Encountering errors while working with our API? No worries! This section will empower you with the knowledge to gracefully handle errors and ensure a smooth user experience.

HTTP Status Codes 🚦

Our API employs standard HTTP status codes to communicate the result of your requests. Familiarize yourself with these commonly encountered status codes:

• 200 OK: Request successful.
• 201 Created: Resource successfully created.
• 400 Bad Request: Invalid or malformed request.
• 401 Unauthorized: Authentication credentials missing or invalid.
• 403 Forbidden: Authentication successful, but access not granted.
• 404 Not Found: Requested resource does not exist.
• 429 Too Many Requests: Rate limit exceeded. Slow down requests.
• 500 Internal Server Error: Something went wrong on our end.

Error Response Format 🚫

In the unfortunate event of an error, our API will respond with JSON containing pertinent error details. The response will include:

• status.message: A concise description of the error.
• status.errors: An array of error strings providing additional information or context.

Example error response:

{
    "data": {},
    "status": {
        "message": "Invalid input data",
        "errors": [
            "The 'email' field is required.",
            "The 'username' field must be at least 5 characters long."
        ]
    }
}

 

Retries and Error Logging Libraries

When working with APIs, implementing effective retry strategies and error logging mechanisms is crucial for maintaining a robust and reliable application. Below, we've compiled a list of popular libraries for handling retries and error logging in various programming languages:

Python

• Retries: retrying - A powerful library that simplifies adding retry logic to your code with customizable conditions and backoff strategies.

• Error Logging: logging - Python's built-in logging module offers flexible logging capabilities with various log levels, output formats, and destinations.

JavaScript (Node.js)

• Retries: async-retry - Ideal for adding retry logic to asynchronous operations in Node.js, integrating well with Promises and async/await.

• Error Logging: winston - A versatile and customizable logging library for Node.js with support for different transports, log levels, and formatting options.

Java

• Retries: Spring Retry - Part of the Spring ecosystem, providing powerful retry and recovery mechanisms, especially for Spring Framework applications.

• Error Logging: Log4j - A widely used logging library for Java applications, offering comprehensive logging options and customization.

Ruby

• Retries: retryable - A gem that simplifies adding retry logic to Ruby methods, offering options to control retries, backoff, and conditions.

• Error Logging: Logger - Ruby's built-in Logger class provides logging capabilities with options to customize log levels, formatting, and output destinations.

C#

• Retries: Polly - A popular resilience and transient-fault-handling library for .NET, allowing you to implement various retry and circuit breaker policies.

• Error Logging: .NET Logging - The built-in logging infrastructure in .NET Core and .NET 5+ offers flexible logging capabilities, with various sinks, log levels, and formatting options.

These libraries are well-regarded within their respective communities and offer robust solutions for handling retries and error logging in your code. Choose the one that best fits your project's requirements and programming language.

Remember, effectively managing retries and logging errors contributes to building resilient and reliable applications.