Changes to HTTP status codes for geocoder XML responses
Daniel Lee
A while ago as part of some internal updates to our geocoding service,
the HTTP status codes returned for XML responses containing geocoder
error codes were changed to more accurately conform to the HTTP spec
(in our opinion).
We thought this was a "good thing" but it proved to cause more
problems than expected. Specifically it is now clear that some HTTP
client libraries make it difficult to inspect the body of an HTTP
response with a non 200 response code. This prevents applications
parsing the XML response from reading the actual geocoder status code,
such as 620 (G_GEO_TOO_MANY_QUERIES).
Consequently we are switching back to returning 200 HTTP status codes
for any response that contains in the body a valid geocoder response
in XML, even if that response is simply a geocoder error code.
Non 200 response codes will only be returned if an error has occurred
that has prevented the request being handled by the geocoder, which
means the body almost certainly does not contain parseable XML anyway.
This change will roll out over the course of the next 24 to 48 hours.
Many thanks,
Thor.