Expose HttpError.reason when available

Is there a better way to get the error reason than parsing HttpError.content from json string to object?

This is what I’m currently doing:

try:
    req = compute.zones().list(project=project_id, maxResults=max_results)
    res = req.execute()
    return res['items']
except HttpError as e:
    reason = json.loads(e.content)['error']['errors'][0]['reason']
    if reason == 'accessNotConfigured':
        <do the thing>

Ideally I’d like to avoid the call to json.loads().

[busunkim96]

I spoke to some other folks today, and I don’t think there’s a error response structure we can count on across all the APIs Google publishes.

If you need a particular field in an error response, parsing it from the JSON is the best option.

[busunkim96]

Hi,

Thanks for the additional context.

I’m not sure how consistent APIs are about defining errors. The YouTube Data API and Drive API seem to have a similar structure.

{
 "error": {
  "errors": [
   {
    "domain": "global",
    "reason": "invalidParameter",
    "message": "Invalid string value: 'asdf'. Allowed values: [mostpopular]",
    "locationType": "parameter",
    "location": "chart"
   }
  ],
  "code": 400,
  "message": "Invalid string value: 'asdf'. Allowed values: [mostpopular]"
 }
}

{
  "error": {
    "code": 400,
    "errors": [
      {
        "domain": "global",
        "location": "orderBy",
        "locationType": "parameter",
        "message": "Sorting is not supported for queries with fullText terms. Results are always in descending relevance order.",
        "reason": "badRequest"
      }
    ],
    "message": "Sorting is not supported for queries with fullText terms. Results are always in descending relevance order."
  }
}

The Analytics API is different - the status seems to be the equivalent of reason.

{
 "error": {
  "code": 403,
  "message": "User does not have sufficient permissions for this profile.",
  "status": "PERMISSION_DENIED"
 }
}