Re: API Pagination limit

["Eric J. Bowman" <[e-mail]>]

Karl Dubost wrote:
>
> Hi,
> 
> About API and too large response limit.
> Jon Masse (cced) asked me a question about API and the right HTTP
> Code to send back to the client. 
> 
> Creating an API returning N posts starting at an index x
> with a limit of N <= 500.
> 
> Someone sends an HTTP GET with n=1000
> http://api.example.org/post?start=1&n=1000
> 
>     GET /post?start=1&n=1000 HTTP/1.1
>     Host: api.example.org
>     User-Agent: FooBar v1
>     Accept: application/json
> 
> What should the API developer send back?
> 
> * 200 OK and a Link for the pagination?
>   Link: </post?start=500&n=500>; rel="Next"
>   (but the client might not know it used an out of range value
> 
> * a 4xx to communicate that there is an out of range value?
>   (but which 4xx? It doesn't seem there is one appropriate.
>   403 doesn't seem right)
> 

200 is definitely wrong, 400 is the appropriate failure code, or use a
307 redirect (the post count may grow to accommodate the request, so
don't use 301).

-Eric