Error response format in Rest API - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Error Response Format in REST API

📖 Scenario: You are building a simple REST API that returns error messages in a consistent format when something goes wrong.

🎯 Goal: Create a Python dictionary that represents an error response with a code and message, then print it as JSON.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a dictionary called error_response with keys code and message

Set code to 404 and message to "Resource not found"

Use the json module to convert the dictionary to a JSON string

Print the JSON string

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

APIs often need to send error messages in a clear, consistent format so clients can understand what went wrong.

💼 Career

Knowing how to format error responses is important for backend developers and anyone working with web services.

1

Create the error response dictionary

Create a dictionary called error_response with these exact entries: 'code': 404 and 'message': "Resource not found".

Rest API

# Create the error_response dictionary with code and message
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use curly braces {} to create a dictionary with keys and values.

2

Import the json module

Import the json module at the top of your code.

Rest API

# Import the json module
# Your code here

error_response = {'code': 404, 'message': "Resource not found"}

Need a hint?

Use import json to work with JSON data.

3

Convert the dictionary to a JSON string

Create a variable called error_json and set it to the JSON string version of error_response using json.dumps().

Rest API

import json

error_response = {'code': 404, 'message': "Resource not found"}

# Convert error_response to JSON string and store in error_json
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use json.dumps() to convert a dictionary to a JSON string.

4

Print the JSON error response

Print the variable error_json to display the JSON error response.

Rest API

import json

error_response = {'code': 404, 'message': "Resource not found"}

error_json = json.dumps(error_response)

# Print the JSON string
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use print() to show the JSON string on the screen.