We use a modified version of the JSend specification for any JSON object that is returned by the system. This allows for a very unified feel for the application and for anything that might consume our application.

We expect any of the following three response types:

Type	Description	Required Keys	Optional Keys
success	All went well, and (usually) some data was returned	status, data
fail	There was a problem with the data submitted, or some pre-condition of the API call wasn’t satisfied	status, message	data
error	An error occurred in processing the request, i.e. an exception was thrown	status, message	data, code

Where we can use the returned type (contained within the status key in the JSON object) to determine how to process our response.

Example Response Types

Success

{
  "status": "success",
  "data": null
}

Required Keys:
status: Always ‘success’
data: An object that contains any data that the API call returns. If the call returns no data, then data will return null.

Fail

{
  "status": "fail",
  "message": "Did not specify gradeable"
}

Required Keys:
status: Always ‘fail’
message: Specify why the API call failed, which is displayed generally.

Optional Keys: This can be used where each key would correspond to the GET/POST data that was sent on the request.