Dear Gavin, Andreas, I'd see standardisation (or at least suggested standards) for error handling as positive for consistency of user experience. I do see what you mean about over-specification, however.
Thanks for the feedback, I've taken the main points and created two pull requests: BIP-0070: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/pull/54/ BIP-0072: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/pull/55/ Please tell me if these need any further work. Ross On 26/04/14 14:23, Gavin Andresen wrote: >> The main area of concern is handling unexpected problems while sending >> the Payment message, or receiving the corresponding PaymentACK message. >> For example, in case of a transport layer failure or non-200 HTTP status >> code while sending the Payment message, what should the wallet software >> do next? Is it safe to re-send the Payment message? I'd propose that for >> any transport failure or 500 status code, the client retries after a >> delay (suggested at 30-60 seconds). For 400 status codes, the request >> should not be repeated, and as such the user should be alerted and a >> copy of the Payment message saved to be resent later. >> > Why does error handling have to be standardized? > > I generally think that wallet software should be free to do whatever gives > the user the best experience, so I'm in favor of restricting BIPs to things > that must be standardized so that different implementations inter-operate. > > >> For 300 (redirect and similar) status codes, is it considered safe to >> follow redirects? I think we have to, but good to make it clear in the >> specification. >> > Referencing whatever RFCs defines how to fetch URLs would be the best way > to do this. Submit a pull request. > > >> On the merchant's side; I think it would be useful for there to be >> guidance for handling of errors processing Payment messages. I'd suggest >> that Payment messages should have a fixed maximum size to avoid merchant >> systems theoretically having to accept files of any size; 10MB would >> seem far larger than in any way practical, and therefore a good maximum >> size? > > PaymentRequests are limited to 50,000 bytes. I can't think of a reason why > Payment messages would need to be any bigger than that. Submit a pull > request to the existing BIP. > > >> A defined maximum time to wait (to avoid DDoS via connection >> holding) might be useful too, although I'd need to do measurements to >> find what values are tolerable. >> > Implementation detail that doesn't belong in the spec, in my humble opinion. > > >> I would like to have the protocol state that merchant systems should >> handle repeatedly receiving the same Payment message, and return an >> equivalent (if not identical) PaymentACK to each. This is important in >> case of a network failure while the client is sending the Payment >> message, as outlined above. >> > I think this should be left to implementations to work out. > > >> Lastly, I'm wondering about potential timing issues with transactions; >> if a merchant system wants to see confirmation of a transaction before >> sending a PaymentACK... > > .... not a good idea. The user should get feedback right away. Poking a > "pay now" button and then waiting more than a second or three to get "your > payment has been received and is being processed" is terrible UI. > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Start Your Social Network Today - Download eXo Platform Build your Enterprise Intranet with eXo Platform Software Java Based Open Source Intranet - Social, Extensible, Cloud Ready Get Started Now And Turn Your Intranet Into A Collaboration Platform http://p.sf.net/sfu/ExoPlatform _______________________________________________ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development