What should a JSON service return on failure / error

Question

I\'m writing a JSON service in C# (.ashx file). On a successful request to the service I return some JSON data. If the request fails, either because an exception was thrown

Answer 1

Using HTTP status codes would be a RESTful way to do it, but that would suggest you make the rest of the interface RESTful using resource URIs and so on.

In truth, define the interface as you like (return an error object, for example, detailing the property with the error, and a chunk of HTML that explains it, etc), but once you've decided on something that works in a prototype, be ruthlessly consistent.