Error handling in API routes

[jamieparkinson]

I noticed that in your API routes you're explicitly returning 500 errors - like here, for example

week-10-12-tfb-mark-gnnk/src/pages/api/update-status.js

Lines 19 to 22 in 1871333

	} catch (error) {
	console.error(error.message)
	res.status(500).json({ error: 'Something went wrong' })
	}

A piece of advice that has stuck with me is never to return a 500 on purpose, or at the very least only to return a 500 if you really have no idea what to do with it, as it's for the case that "the server has encountered a situation it does not know how to handle".

You're already using 405 nicely for if the user is doing something other than a PUT - some other descriptive errors might be a 400 if the date isn't in the right format, a 404 if the task with the given ID can't be found, or a 418 if the server is a teapot. Then if you catch an error and you still can't work out what it's about - it's time for a 500! I think the server will return a 500 for you if there's an uncaught error, so you still don't necessarily need to handle it yourselves.