Errors and status codes

Errors come back as HTTP 200

The API answers almost every request with HTTP 200, including failed ones. Check the success flag in the body:

{
  "response": {
    "success": "0",
    "error": "Your token seems expired, please login again",
    "tech_msg": "invalid_user"
  }
}

Field	Meaning
success	0 when the request failed
error	Human-readable message. Safe to log; don’t show it to account holders.
tech_msg	Machine-readable reason, on authentication errors
error1, error2, …	One message per invalid field, on validation errors

Authentication errors

tech_msg	What happened	What to do
invalid_user	Unknown user, or the token is expired or wrong	Log in again, then retry once
invalid_password	Wrong password	Check the credentials; don’t retry in a loop
inactive_user	The user is disabled	Ask your DCDial administrator

Validation errors

When fields are missing or invalid, the response lists one message per problem:

{ "response": { "success": 0, "error1": "<first problem>", "error2": "<second problem>" } }

HTTP status codes

Status	Meaning
200	The request reached the API. Check success.
500	Unexpected server error. Safe to retry read-only requests after a short wait.
502, 503, 504	The API is temporarily unavailable. Check status.dcdial.com and retry with backoff.

A robust client

import time, requests

def dcdial(fields, retries=3):
    for attempt in range(retries):
        r = requests.post("https://api.dcdial.com/api/", data=fields, timeout=30)
        if r.status_code >= 500 and fields["type"].startswith("get"):
            time.sleep(2 ** attempt)
            continue
        r.raise_for_status()
        body = r.json()
        data = body.get("response", body)
        if str(data.get("success")) != "1":
            raise RuntimeError(data.get("error") or data)
        return data
    raise RuntimeError("DCDial API unavailable")