Response status code to PATCH /staged with a bad JSON body

[garethsb]

https://github.com/AMWA-TV/nmos-device-connection-management/blob/v1.0.x/APIs/ConnectionAPI.raml#L247-L250

The RAML seems to imply a JSON parsing error should result in a 500 response. But bad JSON is surely a client error and ought to be a 4xx code, just as schema or constraints violations are. IS-04 Registration API uses a 400 code for this.

500 ought to be reserved for intelligible requests that cannot be acted on.

[garethsb]

Hmm, I've just re-read this. The RAML is talking about parsing of the transport file that may be embedded in the JSON... I still think a 4xx code is a better response ("I'm up and running but I don't understand what you said") than a 500 Internal Server Error in this case. 400 Bad Request ("I could not understand the request due to invalid syntax") probably.

[simonrankine]

Hi Gareth,

I think this is a reasonable argument, but I'm a bit worried that this moves away a from a typo change to a more normative change, which we can't really do without the major version bump. Unless you feel this is a critical issue I'm tempted to put it as something that should be rolled into any future v2 update, and just leave it as a quirk of the spec for now.

Thoughts?

Regards,

Simon

[garethsb]

OK... I think...
How do we track quirks? :-)

[simonrankine]

Hi Gareth,

I'm putting "enhancement" tags on stuff in here that we should look at for future versions, so we can review it at that time.