render_errors doesn't work with 2 options

[noma4i]

Environment

• Elixir version 1.3.2
• Phoenix version (mix deps): 1.2
• Operating system: macos

Expected behavior

render_errors: [accepts: ~w(html json)]

Errors both works for html or json specified ways.

Actual behavior

html - ok
json - Phoenix.Template.HTML.encode_to_iodata!(%{errors: %{message: "Not Found"}})

BUT! If you define only HTML or JSON at a time in accepts it will work correct.

[chrismccord]

Can you provide more information on what isn't working for you with json? We need to see the full stack trace and details about the request as I'm not sure what issues you are hitting from the description. Thanks!

[noma4i]

It's easy.

• Define in config render_errors: [accepts: ~w(html)]
  Update ErrorView to render 404.html. - check it, looks nice.
• Define in config render_errors: [accepts: ~w(json)]
  Update ErrorView to render 404.json as %{error: "message"}. - check it, looks even better.
• Define in config render_errors: [accepts: ~w(html json)]
  Update ErrorView to support 404.html - works as always.
  Do the same for 404.json. = error.

Stacktrace:
[error] #PID<0.533.0> running MD.Endpoint terminated Server: localhost:4001 (http) Request: GET /api/users123 ** (exit) an exception was raised: ** (FunctionClauseError) no function clause matching in Phoenix.Template.HTML.encode_to_iodata!/1 (phoenix) lib/phoenix/template/html.ex:12: Phoenix.Template.HTML.encode_to_iodata!(%{errors: %{message: "Not Found"}}) (phoenix) lib/phoenix/controller.ex:641: Phoenix.Controller.do_render/4 (plug) lib/plug/adapters/cowboy/handler.ex:15: Plug.Adapters.Cowboy.Handler.upgrade/4 (cowboy) src/cowboy_protocol.erl:442: :cowboy_protocol.execute/4

[chrismccord]

It appears you are not sending the proper accept headers. When you specify both [accepts: ~w(html json)], the way we choose which one to render is based on the accept header sent by the client. Can you ensure you are sending the application/json accept header, or using the _format=json query param? A quick check would be to hit /api/users123?_format=json

[noma4i]

@chrismccord Fair enough. Explicit header will force phoenix to work render json. In this case Im lost with ideas here: https://api.github.com/users123 - you can open in browser w/o any hassle with headers.

Looks like I will need to add more logic around ErrorView/gut conn to determine content-type.

[noma4i]

Anyway it's not an error in phoenix.
P.s: StackOverflow was checked twice before posting here..

[noma4i]

I ended up with decision that error while trying to render json is a bug. Phoenix can guess that I need to render json as an output w/o any format only when render_errors: [accepts: ~w(json)]

While html is rendered all the time not matter are there format=json or any headers.

[josevalim]

Can you please post your error view and how are you are sending requests to render such view? I see no reason why Phoenix would try to encode a map as HTML.

[josevalim]

Also, you can have the same behaviour as GitHub if you put JSON first in the formats list. If you have more than one format, then you must do content negotiation.

[noma4i]

I was able to resolve that issue. Accept: application/json make sense. Edge cases solved by plug middleware.

Thnx all!

[noma4i]

As phoenix not able to reject connection via api pipeline went to unknown path people are doing things like that http://stackoverflow.com/questions/38185875/how-to-enforce-json-encoding-for-phoenix-request

[noma4i]

Im reopening this again. No matter that @josevalim said that we should never enforce any content type at this point Phoenix with render_errors json will render json errors with render_errors: [accepts: ~w(json)] while defined ~w(html json) will always try to fallback in html. Override in ErrorView with json output leads to Phoenix.Template.HTML.encode_to_iodata error. When client is pushed to use pipeline :api with explicit declaration of plug :accepts, ["json"] it will be never reached while Elixir.Phoenix.Router.NoRouteError is called.

Client is trying to open not existing page via pipeline :api in browser, Expected behaviour:

• Client face missing json header error(most obvious) or 404.json

Got:

• HTML 404.

As I can see that is possible since pipelines from router.ex never kick in when routing errors been faced.

Same problem will appear on using custom api like jsonapi where Content-type: application/vnd.api+json is defined. In this case any 404/500 will go to Phoenix.Template.HTML