Error Responses

Lotus follows RFC 7807 for error responses. The response body will contain a JSON object with the following fields:

Field	Description
type	A URI reference that identifies the problem type.
title	A short, human-readable summary of the problem type.
detail	A human-readable explanation specific to this occurrence of the problem.

Lotus errors broadly fall into three categories:

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Validation Error

A validation error occurs when a request is rejected because it does not conform to the API’s schema. For example, if a required field is missing, or if a field is of the wrong type. If a request contains multiple validation errors, the response body will contain an array of error objects under the key validation_errors. Every object in the array will have the following fields:

Field	Description
code	The type of validation error this is.
detail	More information about what exactly what was wrong.
attr	Which attribute of the serialized representation raised this issue.

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Client Error

A client error occurs when a request is rejected because it is invalid. For example, if you try to create a resource with an ID that already exists, or don’t have sufficient permissions to access the resource.

A non exhaustive list of client errors:

HTTP Code	Error Title	Description
401	authentication_failure	Request has an invalid API Key or other authentication mechanism
400	duplicate_resource	You attempted to create a resource that either already exists exactlky as is, or violates db constraints.
404	resource_not_found	The requested resource does not exist.
400	external_connection_invalid	You specified a connection with an outside resource (like Stripe) that is invalid.
400	invalid_state	The requested action is not allowed in the current state of the resource. This is usually a busienss logic restriciton.
400	invalid_request	The request is invalid. Check the detail for more information.

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Server Error

A server error occurs when the server is unable to process the request. For example, if the server is down, or if there is a bug in the server’s code. It has been reported to the Lotus team and we are investigating!

A non exhaustive list of server errors:

HTTP Code	Error Title	Description
500	server_error	Something went wrong on our end. We’re looking into it!
500	external_connection_failed	One of the external services we rely on (Stripe, webhooks service, etc.) is not working as expected. We’re looking into it!
500	aggregation_engine_failure	Something went wrong with our aggregation engine. Though this is usually a Lotus server-side error, there are some cases where invalid clienbt input can trigger this error. Check the detail for more information.