Web API Best Approach for returning HttpResponseMessage

Question

I have a Web API project and right my methods always returns HttpResponseMessage.

So, if it works or fails I return:

No errors:

Answer 1

You can return an error response to provide more detail.

public HttpResponseMessage Get()
{
    HttpError myCustomError = new HttpError("The file has no content or rows to process.") { { "CustomErrorCode", 42 } };
     return Request.CreateErrorResponse(HttpStatusCode.BadRequest, myCustomError);
 }

Would return:

{ 
  "Message": "The file has no content or rows to process.", 
  "CustomErrorCode": 42 
}

More details here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/youssefm/archive/2012/06/28/error-handling-in-asp-net-webapi.aspx

I also use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes to help me determine what http status code to return.