problems

Problems is an RFC-7807 compliant library for describing HTTP errors, written purely in Go. For more information see RFC-7807.

Usage

The problems library exposes an assortment of interfaces, structs, and functions for defining and using HTTP Problem detail resources.

Predefined Errors

You can define basic Problem details up front by using the NewStatusProblem function

import "github.com/moogar0880/problems"

var (
  // The NotFound problem will be built with an appropriate status code and
  // informative title set. Additional information can be provided in the Detail
  // field of the generated struct
  NotFound = problems.NewStatusProblem(404)
)

Which, when served over HTTP as JSON will look like the following:

{
   "type": "about:blank",
   "title": "Not Found",
   "status": 404
}

Detailed Errors

New errors can also be created a head of time, or on the fly like so:

import "github.com/moogar0880/problems"

func NoSuchUser() *problems.DefaultProblem {
	nosuch := problems.NewStatusProblem(404)
	nosuch.Detail = "Sorry, that user does not exist."
	return nosuch
}

Which, when served over HTTP as JSON will look like the following:

{
   "type": "about:blank",
   "title": "Not Found",
   "status": 404,
   "detail": "Sorry, that user does not exist."
}

Expanded Errors

The specification for these HTTP problems was designed to allow for arbitrary expansion of the problem resources. This can be accomplished through this library by implementing the Problem interface:

import "github.com/moogar0880/problems"

type CreditProblem struct {
	problems.DefaultProblem

    Balance  float64
    Accounts []string
}

func (cp *CreditProblem) ProblemType() (*url.URL, error) {
	u, err := url.Parse(cp.Type)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, err
	}
	return u, nil
}

func (cp *CreditProblem) ProblemTitle() string {
	return cp.Title
}

Which, when served over HTTP as JSON will look like the following:

{
   "type": "about:blank",
   "title": "Unauthorized",
   "status": 401,
   "balance": 30,
   "accounts": ["/account/12345", "/account/67890"]
}

Serving Problems

Additionally, RFC-7807 defines two new media types for problem resources, application/problem+json" and application/problem+xml. This library defines those media types as the constants ProblemMediaType and ProblemMediaTypeXML.

In order to facilitate serving problem definitions, this library exposes two http.HandlerFunc implementations which accept a problem, and return a functioning HandlerFunc that will server that error.

package main

import (
	"net/http"

    "github.com/moogar0880/problems"
)

var Unauthorized = problems.NewStatusProblem(401)

func main() {
	mux := http.NewServeMux()
	mux.HandleFunc("/secrets", problems.StatusProblemHandler(Unauthorized))

	server := http.Server{Handler: mux, Addr: ":8080"}
	server.ListenAndServe()
}