tribune/is_it_working — pull request #1 by cbeer (2012-06-18 16:17:06+00:00)
Title: use HTTP code 417 Exceptation Failed

Hi -

At MPOW, we were developing a similar kind of application, and (in a slight abuse of HTTP codes) we started to use the HTTP 417 "Expectation Failed" response (instead of 500) to distinguish between a failure in an underlying service and a catastrophic failure of the application.

To make our abuse less flagrant, we also added explicit client-provided expectations (e.g. the index has n rows, etc).

Thoughts?