this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2025
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I’ve had fellow developers fight me on this point, in much the same way as your parent post.
“If you return a 404 for a record not found, how will I know I have the right endpoint?”
You’ll know you have the right endpoint because I advertised it—in Open API, in docs, etc.
“But, if
/users/123returns a 404, does that mean that the endpoint can’t be found or the record can’t be found?”Doesn’t matter. That resource doesn’t exist. So, act appropriately.
Standardize a response body across your APIs that specifies the cause of the non-2xx response. Have an enum per API/service for causes. Include them in the API doc.
If anyone still doesn't get it, quietly dispose of them at your friend's pig farm.
It's not like you can't return a body with the 404 that specifies that the user itself is not found versus the ending being wrong.