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Message-ID: <806e13040807120930n73b2a307p35332eee27ea48a5@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2008 18:30:01 +0200
From: "Sergio Bossa" <sergio.bossa@gmail.com>
To: abdera-dev@incubator.apache.org
Subject: Improve Abdera user feedback on error conditions
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Hi guys,

given my current experience in leading a small team made up of
developers working for the first time with Abdera, I have some
thoughts about Abdera error handling: more specifically, I think that
Abdera error handling code should provide better user feedback.

Let me give two practical examples.

As a first example, if users POST to an Abdera server an Atom entry
document *without* specifying the application/atom+xml content type,
they get an hard-to-understand UnsupportedOperationException by the
log side, and an even harder-to-understand server error (500) by the
response side.
As a second example, if users POST to an Abdera server an Atom entry
document *without* specifying its id, they simply get an empty
response: here, understanding is even harder than the first example,
even if the error is very simple.
Given the lack of true user-oriented feedback, troubleshooting
requires to go deep into the code and/or debug it: too much IMHO for
first-time users, who get discouraged.

So, I think that Abdera should improve both error gathering and error
feedback capabilities.
What do you think about that?
I have some ideas about how to do that, and I'd be more that happy to
share and eventually work on them.
Let me know.

Cheers,

Sergio B.

-- 
Sergio Bossa
Software Passionate, Java Technologies Specialist and Open Source Enthusiast.
Blog : http://sbtourist.blogspot.com
Sourcesense - making sense of Open Source : http://www.sourcesense.com
Pro-netics s.p.a. : http://www.pronetics.it