Empty responses do not work

[hskrasek]

For the delete requests of my API, I like to return 204 (no content) when it succeeds. Usually I would do Response::make('', 204);, and that would work fine. But it seems that when the router goes to morph the response, it turns empty string into a null, which then gets json_encoded to "null", and winds up giving a Malformed JSON error for anything consuming the response.

The request still works, but I'd like to remove the Malformed JSON error. Anyone else ran into this and find a work around?

When I get time after work, I'll look into finding a nice way to check for empty responses, and send in a PR if necessary

[nielsiano]

Did you ever figure out a way to do this?

[hskrasek]

I'll be honest... not yet. Have been a bit tied up with an API update at work, so other bigger things have kept my attention. I have an idea though, so I'll see if I can test it and get it working today. Maybe even submit another PR in the process.

[bweston92]

Using Response facade this might work? setStatusCode method I believe.—
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On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 5:26 PM, Hunter Skrasek notifications@github.com
wrote:

I'll be honest... not yet. Have been a bit tied up with an API update at work, so other bigger things have kept my attention. I have an idea though, so I'll see if I can test it and get it working today. Maybe even submit another PR in the process.

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
#49 (comment)

[hskrasek]

Well its not the status code thats the issue, since passing 204 as the second param of Response::make does the same thing. Currently it is because the api routes run through the morph method, which failing to find an appropriate transformer, just json_encodes the data. But json_encode of '', null, false, etc. results in malformed json.

I think the best fix for this would be a check to see if the status code is 204, if yes, then set the response content to null and return before trying to morph the data.

[philsturgeon]

Magically relying on a status code for if it should show a body or not sounds terrifying to me. It should respect a response object if returned or try to construct one if not. Or... well anything other than magically relying on a status code. Empty '' needs to be an option.

[hskrasek]

I do agree that relying on the status code could lead to issue. Do you think checking for '', null, or false and skipping the "morphing" or "transforming" would be an adequate compromise @philsturgeon? Or still to "magical"?

[bweston92]

The response code is "No Content" which means it should return nothing at all in order to be valid.—
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On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 8:22 PM, Hunter Skrasek notifications@github.com
wrote:

I do agree that relying on the status code could lead to issue. Do you think checking for '', null, or false and skipping the "morphing" or "transforming" would be an adequate compromise @philsturgeon? Or still to "magical"?

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#49 (comment)

[hskrasek]

@bweston92 I know, what I was saying is check if the response data is an empty string, or null (and maybe false), and if so skip trying to morse the data to json, and instead set the response data to nothing, and continue on as normal.

[hipsterjazzbo]

FWIW, I'm doing this exact thing (sending an empty 204 response for deletes), and this works great for me:

return Response::make(NULL, 204);

Returns 204 with an empty body. I'm on Laravel 4.2, not sure if that makes a difference in this case.

[jasonlewis]

This should be fixed on 0.5-dev, will tag in the coming days once I finish off a few other things. I'd suggest you return null as the content like @cfidecaro has done, although an empty string should suffice.

[nielsiano]

FWIW: Using return Response::make(null, 204); I still get a 204 No Content with "Malformed JSON". I'm on 4.1.*

[jasonlewis]

You'll need to use 0.5.*@dev of the API for it to work.
On 28 May 2014 21:53, "Niels" notifications@github.com wrote:

FWIW: Using return Response::make(null, 204); I still get a 204 No
Content with "Malformed JSON". I'm on 4.1.*

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/49#issuecomment-44399223
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