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

Error Response Structure in REST API

📖 Scenario: You are building a REST API that needs to send clear error messages to clients when something goes wrong. This helps users understand what happened and how to fix it.

🎯 Goal: Create a simple error response structure in JSON format that includes an error code, a message, and details.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a dictionary called error_response with keys code, message, and details

Set code to the integer 404

Set message to the string "Resource not found"

Set details to a list containing the string "The requested item does not exist"

Print the error_response dictionary as a JSON string

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

APIs need to send clear error messages so users and developers understand what went wrong and how to fix it.

💼 Career

Knowing how to structure and send error responses is important for backend developers and API designers.

1

Create the error response dictionary

Create a dictionary called error_response with these exact entries: code set to 404, message set to "Resource not found", and details set to a list containing "The requested item does not exist".

Rest API

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

Need a hint?

Use curly braces {} to create a dictionary. The details value should be a list with one string inside.

2

Import the JSON module

Import the json module to convert the dictionary to a JSON string.

Rest API

error_response = {
    "code": 404,
    "message": "Resource not found",
    "details": ["The requested item does not exist"]
}

# Import the json module
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use import json at the top of your code.

3

Convert the dictionary to a JSON string

Use json.dumps() to convert the error_response dictionary to a JSON string and store it in a variable called json_error.

Rest API

import json

error_response = {
    "code": 404,
    "message": "Resource not found",
    "details": ["The requested item does not exist"]
}

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

Need a hint?

Use json.dumps(error_response) to convert the dictionary.

4

Print the JSON error response

Print the variable json_error to display the JSON string of the error response.

Rest API

import json

error_response = {
    "code": 404,
    "message": "Resource not found",
    "details": ["The requested item does not exist"]
}

json_error = json.dumps(error_response)

# Print the JSON error response
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use print(json_error) to show the JSON string.