Django ajax error response best practice

Question

I\'m using ajax to improve user experience in my Django project. My concern here is how to respond error to browser properly. As far as I know, I can either:

1. valid

Answer 1

If you return a response with a status code of 4xx or 5xx this is a an error and will trigger jQueries error handler. While it is certainly possible to simple return status 200 every time and use a "error" field in the JSON response (like suggested by dm03514) this is bad for two reasons:

1. It violates good HTTP practice. There is a reason why there are plenty of error-codes defined

2. You can't use the fact that jQuery already has a error-Handler that lets you separate normal behavior from error handling.

Most of the time the error response will be much different from the non-error response So it simply makes no sense to put the handling of this messages in one piece of JS code. So, to sum things up, use a JSON response with status 200 for your normal responses and return a (appropriate!) 4xx/5xx response for errors. These can carry JSON payload, too, so your server side can add additional details about the error.