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    I think that you would have to determine if the error was transport related or api related anyway but you have the point when it comes to additional work for extracting the actual api error text since I don't think same error format could be used for all situations. About your second point, one could argue that 500 code was added exactly for that reason and you can return custom message for more info in error object. But you are right 500 in this case would be misleading if request was partially successful Commented Mar 23, 2022 at 8:20
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    The caveat to the first point is that it makes handling certain errors more complex when you either have easy ways to catch specific HTTP status codes, or when the exact failure reason simply does not matter (or in cases where the devs can’t keep the payload consistent, like how GitHub’s API returns a 200 in some places for requests that were ratelimited, but uses a completely different schema for the error payload from what the request would normally provide). Commented Mar 23, 2022 at 21:17
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    Or it's part of a layered system where only the payload is delivered, not the raw HTTP response. Commented Mar 24, 2022 at 13:24
  • the fact that some HTTP clients are terrible is not a good excuse to ignore a large part of the protocol being used Commented Mar 25, 2022 at 23:25
  • In javascript you would use promises, not exceptions. Commented Mar 26, 2022 at 12:55