Opening the Instapaper API

Post by hartror » Thu, Jul 02, 2015, 10:41 PM UTC

mrec wrote: post #30

hartror wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gets even better: > If the response is not valid JSON, it should be interpreted as an HTTP 503 "Service Temporarily Unavailable" error, and the request should be retried later. Why not just return 503?

Maybe it does, normally. But there's always an outside chance that everything's fine at the point you start writing a response, but goes pear-shaped before you finish. This wording just reinforces what's probably common sense, i.e. that there's no reason you'd see invalid JSON other than a hopefully-transient operational issue.