Error reporting other than a fault

I'm curious how to handle more complex error situations than the
XML-RPC fault will support.  Should I just create and document
additional response payload elements?

I have an application that has a web interface.  I'm now adding
XML-RPC web service as a second way to access the application.

For serious errors I return a XML-RPC fault code and string.  I
realized a response can have only one fault and no other payload
(params).  An example is an invalid method name.

But, often I need to return multiple errors.  For example, a request
might include a number of input parameters (I use a struct for this)
and the application validates the parameters.  So a login method might
have a username and a password and the application might need to
report that the username was too short and the password didn't meet
the requirements.

So, currently in the response payload I'm returning a "status" that
indicates success or failure, and upon failure I include an "errors"
struct that has the parameter names as the keys and a list of one or
more errors messages associated with that input parameter as the value.

So, I'm returning an error but it's not an XML-RPC fault.

Is this an appropriate solution or can you recommend a better
approach?

There's other errors that are not related to a specific input
parameter.  For example if the login method fails with "Failed to log
in".  I could return this as an XML-RPC fault string, but it's
possible that the application can generate an additional more detailed
message along with the generic (e.g.  "Your account has expired").

For this I have a "messages" array in the response.  (Note that
messages can be included on success, too.)


Thanks for any suggestions and comments you may have.






-- 
Bill Moseley
[email protected]


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