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Comment by SirAllCaps | Hacker News Reader

Found this while scouring this list of HTTP status codes, because I wanted to make sure I was giving appropriate responses in this web API I'm developing.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes

Its rather funny, isnt it. But I wonder what the context is. Why they added it.

It was an April Fools Joke

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper_Text_Coffee_Pot_Control_...

Started off as an April's fools joke, people liked it enough to keep it in.

It was added as a joke, and kept because (according to https://save418.com)

> “It's a reminder that the underlying processes of computers are still made by humans”

Stupid reason imo. Adding childish humor to a protocol seems like harmless fun until you remember how much of a mess network protocols, and their specs, and their implementation is. Maybe you think a 418 error page is funny, but I think you’ll appreciate it a lot less when your application gets a rather confounding error because some service provider wanted to remind you that the underlying processes of computers are still made by humans, rather than implement the actually correct response.

/me slaps AmericanChopper around a bit with a large trout

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/trout_slap

That’s trout abuse.

I thought it was handling fish under discuss m suspicious circumstances.

It's (presumably) more humane than whipping some llama ass.

...

Nope, it's still funny, we're keeping it.

Nope, it’s still unfunny, it should have been deleted then and there. In fact, it has.

I promise that knowing it’s supposed to be a joke is _not_ going to make you less frustrated if you ever end up having to debug a non-descriptive 418 error. To make it worse the description and the error code aren’t even consistent. 4xx is a client error, but your web server being a teapot is definitely a server side problem.

No, it should be a client error. The error is intended to be returned when a client has asked a teapot to perform a coffeepot-only operation - which is obviously a mistake on the client side.

This makes it similar to 405 Method Not Allowed, 406 Not Acceptable, or 426 Upgrade Required.

Sure, but I’ve actually had to debug a few 418 errors on production workloads, and none of them involved teapot services. Knowing that the implementers of the error thought it was a hilarious joke certainly didn’t make the experience more fun.

No, it's a great canary in the coal mine. Anyone who doesn't implement proper handling of 418 gets their general error handling facilities tested (4xx).

What is the correct way to handle a 418? As if it were a 500? A 400? A 403? A 404? A 429?…

418 is a class 4xx error, which means the client erred and shouldn't repeat the request as-is. That is, any unrecognized error beginning with a 4 must be handled as if it were the base error class, 400, "Bad Request".

> the server cannot or will not process the request due to something that is perceived to be a client error (for example, malformed request syntax, invalid request message framing, or deceptive request routing).

Must be fun at parties

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