Rails - Jul 2006 - Returning custom error messages in ActionWebService

I want to return my own error messages from an API instead of letting
the client see the stack trace.  I''m returning a custom structure so I
guess I could just put a member in that structure for the error
message, although that seems like kind of a hack.  Any suggestions?

Chris

On 7/29/06, snacktime <snacktime@gmail.com> wrote:
> I answered my own question sort of.  I just created a top level struct
> that I wrap everything else into that has members for error messags,
> then make sure I have a rescue clause at the end of every method.
Ok I spoke too soon.  That works in the api methods but not in the
invocation filters.  I could call the filter from each method but
that''s kind of a hack.  The invocation filters will show part of the
stack trace if you return false, which just isn''t acceptable for a lot
of applications.  Any ideas?

On 7/29/06, snacktime <snacktime@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/29/06, snacktime <snacktime@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I answered my own question sort of.  I just created a top level struct
> > that I wrap everything else into that has members for error messags,
> > then make sure I have a rescue clause at the end of every method.
>
> Ok I spoke too soon.  That works in the api methods but not in the
> invocation filters.  I could call the filter from each method but
> that''s kind of a hack.  The invocation filters will show part of
the
> stack trace if you return false, which just isn''t acceptable for a
lot
> of applications.  Any ideas?
>
Ok after doing some investigating I found out you can set this:

MyController.web_service_exception_reporting = false

However when you do that then the exception message sent to the client
makes soap4r croak with this message.  I have no idea if it''s a bug in
ActionWebService or soap4r.

/usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/soap/mapping/mapping.rb:106:in
`fault2exception'': undefined method `+'' for nil:NilClass
(NoMethodError)

It also just sends a generic error message instead of the custom
message I want returned to the client.  Also, I can''t just call the
before_invocation filter from the api method because it does it''s
eager loading of associations before I can run my filter, and I happen
to be using a postgresql set search_path in the filter, which has to
be set before any other database queries.

I answered my own question sort of.  I just created a top level struct
that I wrap everything else into that has members for error messags,
then make sure I have a rescue clause at the end of every method.

On 7/29/06, snacktime <snacktime@gmail.com> wrote:
> I want to return my own error messages from an API instead of letting
> the client see the stack trace.  I''m returning a custom structure
so I
> guess I could just put a member in that structure for the error
> message, although that seems like kind of a hack.  Any suggestions?
>
> Chris
>