400 BAD request HTTP error code meaning?

Question

I have a JSON request which I'm posting to a HTTP URL.

Should this be treated as 400 where requestedResource field exists but "Roman" is an invalid value for this field?

[{requestedResource:"Roman"}]  

Should this be treated as 400 where "blah" field doesn't exist at all?

[{blah:"Roman"}] 

Answer 1

A 400 means that the request was malformed. In other words, the data stream sent by the client to the server didn't follow the rules.

In the case of a REST API with a JSON payload, 400's are typically, and correctly I would say, used to indicate that the JSON is invalid in some way according to the API specification for the service.

By that logic, both the scenarios you provided should be 400s.

Imagine instead this were XML rather than JSON. In both cases, the XML would never pass schema validation--either because of an undefined element or an improper element value. That would be a bad request. Same deal here.

Answer 2

From w3.org

10.4.1 400 Bad Request

The request could not be understood by the server due to malformed syntax. The client SHOULD NOT repeat the request without modifications.