ipfs object get with protobuf encoding never errors in HTTP API

[RichardLitt]

ipfs object get --encoding=protobuf works using the normal CLI:

$ ipfs object get QmW2WQi7j6c7UgJTarActp7tDNikE4B2qXtFCfLPdsgaTQ --enc=protobuf
1
" ? :?^?E???p??\?|?.??t|d??U??cat.jpg?
$  ipfs object get kitten --enc=protobuf
Error: invalid ipfs ref path

However, when put through the HTTP API, it will not return an error if the key is invalid or missing.

13:07 ~/src/http-api-spec (feature/object) 🐕 curl -i -X POST "http://localhost:5001/api/v0/object/get?arg=&encoding=protobuf"
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: go-ipfs/0.4.0-dev
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2016 17:07:58 GMT
Content-Length: 0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

13:07 ~/src/http-api-spec (feature/object) 🐕  curl -i -X POST "http://localhost:5001/api/v0/object/get?arg=kitten&encoding=protobuf"
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: go-ipfs/0.4.0-dev
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2016 17:08:01 GMT
Content-Length: 0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

13:08 ~/src/http-api-spec (feature/object) 🐕  curl -i -X POST "http://localhost:5001/api/v0/object/get?arg=mW2WQi7j6c7UgJTarActp7tDNikE4B2qXtFCfLPdsgaTQ&encoding=protobuf"
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: go-ipfs/0.4.0-dev
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2016 17:08:15 GMT
Content-Length: 0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

This should be solved before merging ipfs-inactive/http-api-spec#32.

[RichardLitt]

Blocking ipfs-inactive/http-api-spec#67.

[Stebalien]

Would it be acceptable to return a JSON error?

[RichardLitt]

Sure. But that needs to be returned.

[RichardLitt]

It should at least return a status code of 500.

[Stebalien]

We really shouldn't ever be returning 500 (500 means the application had some internal error it couldn't handle). Cases:

• Bad Multihash: 400 (it's a malformed request).
• IPFS object couldn't be found (but may exist somewhere): 504.
• IPFS path is impossible (e.g., /ipfs/$hash/a/b where a/b doesn't resolve relative to the object named by $hash): 410 (gone).
• IPNS path doesn't currently resolve (but we found the IPNS record and the associated IPFS object(s)): 404 (not found).

[RichardLitt]

@Stebalien Fascinating!

@whyrusleeping What do you think about this? Might be a wider-reaching issue.

[whyrusleeping]

@Stebalien how much of this has been addressed by your latest PR?

[Stebalien]

My PR only returns a 500 error (with json content) when object get --encoding=protobuf fails. Nothing more.

[Stebalien]

So, this now does return a 500 error. It should probably return something else but that will require some changes to the API (we can revisit semantic errors later, right after we move away from the HTTP API to an RPC based API) . I'd call this specific issue fixed.

[Stebalien]

Ok, so I think this is fixed. However, the error producing the 500 is actually a panic in the daemon so I'm going to wait for that issue to be fixed before declaring this fixed.

• Blocked on sending SIGINT to ipfs repo verify incorrectly reports verify complete when daemon isn't running #4360