zulip/api_docs/rest-error-handling.md

Error handling

Zulip's API will always return a JSON format response. The HTTP status code indicates whether the request was successful (200 = success, 4xx = user error, 5xx = server error).

Every response, both success and error responses, will contain at least two keys:

• msg: an internationalized, human-readable error message string.

• result: either "error" or "success", which is redundant with the HTTP status code, but is convenient when print debugging.

Every error response will also contain an additional key:

• code: a machine-readable error string, with a default value of "BAD_REQUEST" for general errors.

Clients should always check code, rather than msg, when looking for specific error conditions. The string values for msg are internationalized (e.g. the server will send the error message translated into French if the user has a French locale), so checking those strings will result in buggy code.

!!! tip ""

 If a client needs information that is only present in the string value
 of `msg` for a particular error response, then the developers
 implementing the client should [start a conversation here][api-design]
 in order to discuss getting a specific error `code` and/or relevant
 additional key/value pairs for that error response.

In addition to the keys described above, some error responses will contain other keys with further details that are useful for clients. The specific keys present depend on the error code, and are documented at the API endpoints where these particular errors appear.

Changes: Before Zulip 5.0 (feature level 76), all error responses did not contain a code key, and its absence indicated that no specific error code had been allocated for that error.

Common error responses

Documented below are some error responses that are common to many endpoints:

{generate_code_example|/rest-error-handling:post|fixture}

Ignored Parameters

In JSON success responses, all Zulip REST API endpoints may return an array of parameters sent in the request that are not supported by that specific endpoint.

While this can be expected, e.g. when sending both current and legacy names for a parameter to a Zulip server of unknown version, this often indicates either a bug in the client implementation or an attempt to configure a new feature while connected to an older Zulip server that does not support said feature.

{generate_code_example|/settings:patch|fixture}