apichallenges > solutions > post-todos-415

How to complete the challenge POST /todos (415)

Most APIs will report an error when the content-type is specified as a format that they do not support. Some APIs will parse the input using their default processing which can often result in a 500 error. The API Challenges checks the content-type and if it is unsupported returns a 415 status code, to see this we send a POST request to try and create a todo item but with unsupported content type.

POST /todos (415)

Issue a POST request on the /todos end point with an unsupported content type to generate a 415 status code

For this challenge we issue a request with a content-type which is unsupported.

• POST request means we will send information in the body of the message
  • e.g. POST /todos sends to the todos endpoint
• unsupported content type means that we will set content-type to something unknown eg. bob
• add the X-CHALLENGER header to track progress
• we know it has been rejected when we receive a 415 response
• the body of the response should contain the full details of the error message

Basic Instructions

• Issue a POST request to end point "/todos"
  • if running locally that endpoint would be
    • https://apichallenges.herokuapp.com/todos
• The request should have an Content-Type header with an unsupported value e.g bob
• add a valid payload, but it won't match the content type so doesn't matter, but adding a valid payload makes sure that the system is not ignoring the content type specified.
• The request should have an X-CHALLENGER header to track challenge completion
• The response status code should be 415 when all the details are valid.
• Check the body of the response has JSON formatted error response
  • the system defaults to json for errors

Extras:

• try setting the 'accept' header to specify the format of the error message in the response

Example Request

> POST /todos HTTP/1.1
> Host: apichallenges.herokuapp.com
> User-Agent: rest-client
> X-CHALLENGER: x-challenger-guid
> Content-Type: bob
> Accept: */*
> Content-Length: 106

|    {
|       "title": "create todo process payroll",
|       "doneStatus": true,
|       "description": ""
|     }

Example Response

< HTTP/1.1 415 Unsupported Media Type
< Connection: close
< Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2021 13:57:54 GMT
< Content-Type: application/json
< Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
< Access-Control-Allow-Headers: *
< X-Challenger: 19b81e3e-841f-41a9-91c1-373f69091a56
< Server: Jetty(9.4.z-SNAPSHOT)
< Via: 1.1 vegur

Example Response body:

{
  "errorMessages": [
    "Unsupported Content Type - bob"
  ]
}

Overview Video

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