How to show the internal server errors to the user

Question

I am working in an API . I want to throw detailed error messages to the user. Now i am in a situation to decide what kind of error code should be sent or how to explain user if any error occurs in the application internally. For example if database connection fails , what kind of http status code i want to send to the user ?

Can anyone help ?

Answer 1

An HTTP status code generally refers to the status of the HTTP request itself, not the status of the application handling the request. Therefore, most server-side errors are covered by 500 Internal Server Error. Any additional info about the error should be described in the response body. For APIs, the response body will often be JSON or XML, so you can use those formats for your errors. Something like this:

HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error
[headers]

{"status":"error", "message":"The request failed due to database connectivity."}

There are, however, two cases I can think of when you might want another status code. If the user has requested an API method that is not implemented, you might want a 501 Not Implemented, and when there is a temporary service outage, you can use 503 Service Unavailable.

More info about server-side status codes here.