`Status.UNKNOWN_HOST` and `Status.CONNECTION_REFUS...

# http4k

[Mikael Ståldal]

Status.UNKNOWN_HOST and Status.CONNECTION_REFUSED are equal, is that intentional?

Try this:

fun main() {
    println(Status.SERVICE_UNAVAILABLE == Status.UNKNOWN_HOST)
    println(Status.UNKNOWN_HOST == Status.CONNECTION_REFUSED)
}

Gives:

false
true

The reason is that they have the same code (503) and both are clientGenerated.

[dave]

it is intentional. The idea was to encapsulate and communicate different reasons for client side 503s (which are our invention to avoid throwing exceptions out of our HTTP clients)

[Mikael Ståldal]

But what if you want to distinguish between unknown host and connection refused?

[Mikael Ståldal]

It makes sense that they both have code 503, but maybe the equals method should be able to distinguish between them somehow anyway?

[dave]

our thinking was that as far as the client is concerned, there is no difference. Both could be transient

[dave]

of course, you can create a custom equality method to check the message as well if you need it.

[Mikael Ståldal]

BTW, I just discovered that the hashCode method does not take clientGenerated into account (as equals does), making it inconsistent with equals.

[dave]

ah - that is a problem.

[Mikael Ståldal]

(FWIW, I reported an issue about this: https://github.com/http4k/http4k/issues/845)

[Mikael Ståldal]

(Not about the hashCode thing.)

[dave]

ah - we're going to close that as won't fix BTW 🙂

[dave]

but good to have it documented

[Mikael Ståldal]

Yes, it would be good to have your motivation in the GitHub issue as well (more permanent than here on Slack).

[Mikael Ståldal]

Reported issue about the hashCode thing also: https://github.com/http4k/http4k/issues/846

[James Richardson]

I think perhaps separating unknown host and connection refused is worthwhile. Unknown host means that dns name is not defined - maybe its wrong! or resolver not working (which can happen sure), but connection refused means that the server was contacted and responded with a specific icmp message, that server was not listening on that port at that second, or maybe listen queue exceeded, So you almost got there! They seem different.