John,
Let me take a step back here and try to explain a general
reasoning of why API's for the different products behave differently. We
as a wholesaler serve a channel of about 6000 resellers, each with there
unique business processes requirements and frontend languages. Our
customers need to be able to integrate our API's into their system and be
able to follow their own business processes based on what happens to their
requests sent to OpenSRS system. They also should be able to generate an
end-user message using a language of their preference. We also see a need
to simplify reseller's life by providing him/her with an accurate error
message (you'll be surprised how many reseller are looking for there
processed order just to find out it was pended).
To support this the newer APIs return an accurate message that
will allow the reseller to see why the request to the system failed, with
that error message we will also return an error code specific to the
failure so the reseller is able to take appropriate action (IMHO doing
this based on the error code is simpler than parsing our messages which
are not guaranteed to remain the same). Our client code implementation
includes basic error code/message conversion along with specific handling
for the code 7502 - which is the code indicated that reseller did not
have enough funds to process the order.
> Not sure if this is consistent with behavior of other OpenSRS products or
> even logical. Domains don't return an error code if there is an insufficient
> balance.
I agree it is not 100% consistent, but we have to start the process of
improving our API's somewhere. New protocol seemed like a logical choice.
> That makes sense - the error is either confusing to the customer ("Failed to
> create order: Insufficient balance - the customer might think you are
> talking about their balance) or embarrassing to the reseller (Customer would
> think you don't pay your bills or something).
I agree, it does not make any sense if you assume that the error is for
the end user. But the error is there for you along with the code.
I would be interested to hear the feedback from the other members of this
list on this issue.
Leonid Igolnik
OpenSRS developer.
