HTTP: Industry standards for back responses to the client

Question

Hi all I'm new to web development so I'm developing a simple online recipe book to allow me to also learn node and angular in the process.

How ever I'm struggling with what type of responses I should send back to the client for success and fails, in the case of post requests, or delete requests.

Here's an example of an api POST access point:

app.post('/recipe/',(req,res)=>{

res.set({
    'Access-Control-Allow-Origin': 'http://localhost:4201'
  })

  console.log("Recieved req at /recipe/")
  if(req.body.recipe === undefined){
      res.send("Request not filled. No recipe found");
  }
  if(req.body.ingredients === undefined){
      res.send("Request not filled. No ingredients found");
  }
  //var r = new Recipe(req.body.recipe,req.body.ingredients);
  mongo.addRecipe(req.body.recipe,req.body.ingredients).then((promise)=>{
      mongo.getAllRecipeByName().then(promise=>{
          console.log(promise);
      });

      res.send(promise);
  })
})

Here's the code for mongo.addRecipe() so you know what's being returned in that promise:

    async addRecipe(recipeName,ingredients){
   if(ingredients == null){
       return null;
   }
   if(recipeName == null){
       return null;
   }
    var recipe = new Recipe(recipeName,ingredients);
   if(recipe.getIngredients().length <= 0){
       return null;
   }

    try{
        const client = new MongoClient(this.uriString);
        
        await client.connect();
        const db = client.db(this.databaseString);
        const recipeCollection = db.collection(this.collectionString);
        
        var status = await recipeCollection.insertOne(recipe);
        client.close();
        if(status.acknowledge == true){
            return status
        }
        else{
            return status
        }
        //console.log(await recipeCollection.find({recipeName:recipeName}).toArray());
    
    }
    catch(e){
        console.error("Failed addRecipe() params: "+recipeName+" "+ingredients+e);
        return null;
    }
    //String recipeName  List<String> ingredients
    //creates connection with mongo database.
    //add {name:'recipeName',ingredients:'ingredients'} to mongoDB
    
}

So as you can see some of my verification statements return null and then I'm sending null back to the client. Is this a mistake? In the case of success I am returning the massive object that's returned from collection.insertOne();

What should I be sending to the client in the case of success and failure that fits with the industry standards?

idk about any industry standards but what you can do fix an object which you'l return on on every call. something like `{"status": true, "data": {your data}, "message":"any message here"}` . if intended action is successful then you'll return true in status or else false, any json data in `data` and corresponding message in `message` key — Rohit Ambre, Aug 19 '20 at 17:23
@RohitAmbre Thank you for your response. This idea makes a lot of sense to me and I'm going to refactor my code to fit this model. Thanks again! — jakegergen, Aug 19 '20 at 18:08
To be honest there is no strict rule, these are just conventions, I highly recommend take a look at https://foursquare.com as a really good example but the best practice is using http code not responses to make your server side action more clear `201` for POST action and `204` for DELETE action — MohamadrezaRahimianGolkhandani, Aug 19 '20 at 20:01

HTTP: Industry standards for back responses to the client

0 Answers0