Returning 200 on failwhale

[dec...@red-bean.com]

Since sometime today I have been noticing the following:

GET http://twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline/decklin.json --> 200
OK
Cache-Control: max-age=300
Connection: close
Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 17:02:03 GMT
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Server: Apache
Content-Length: 75
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
Expires: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 17:07:03 GMT
Last-Modified: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:41:38 GMT
Client-Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 17:02:03 GMT
Client-Peer: 128.121.146.100:80
Client-Response-Num: 1

{"error":"Twitter is down for maintenance. It will return in 10
minutes."}

The headers are normal. The content is fine, although IIRC the JSON is
usually a list and not a hash (I guess I should check for that). The
problem is the HTTP status code; it should clearly be 503 or something
like that.

I would really not prefer to dig into the returned content and try to
test for/parse weird error messages when I can (and do) already handle
HTTP errors in a defined way. Can this be fixed?

[Alex Payne]

Sure can.

--
Alex Payne
http://twitter.com/al3x

[dec...@red-bean.com]

You are the best.

On Jul 2, 1:17 pm, "Alex Payne" <a...@twitter.com> wrote:
> Sure can.
>