# Expected Error format of API response
**URL:** https://discuss.emberjs.com/t/expected-error-format-of-api-response/18441
**Category:** Ember Data
**Created:** [December 21, 2020, 1:25pm UTC](https://discuss.emberjs.com/t/expected-error-format-of-api-response/18441 "2020-12-21T13:25:12Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@ChrizzDF](https://discuss.emberjs.com/u/ChrizzDF)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2020, 1:25pm UTC](https://discuss.emberjs.com/t/expected-error-format-of-api-response/18441/1 "2020-12-21T13:25:12Z")
I’m not able to send the API errors in a format that Ember/EmberData (both v3.22.0) and is able to consume for model errors to display them in templates. I’m using RESTAdapter and RESTSerializer.
My product model looks like this:
```auto
export default class ProductModel extends Model {
@attr('string') name;
...
}
```
The expected default format is explained in the Documentation:
> **[Errors - 3.22 - Ember API Documentation](https://api.emberjs.com/ember-data/3.22/classes/Errors)**
>
> Holds validation errors for a given record, organized by attribute names. Every Model has an errors property that is an instance of Errors. This can be used to display validation error messages returned from the server when a record.save() rejects....
What I understand reading this, is:
```auto
// api response
{
errors: [
{
'attribute': 'name',
'message': 'This field cannot be blank.'
}
]
}
```
But I also tried many other formats. To see if the errors get properly processed by Ember, I console.log them in the catch block like this but still empty.
```auto
@action async save(product) {
try {
await product.save();
} catch(res) {
console.log('errors', product.get('errors')); // []
}
}
```
Hope someone could help me with that! 🙏🏻
---
### Author:  [@dknutsen](https://discuss.emberjs.com/u/dknutsen)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2020, 4:47pm UTC](https://discuss.emberjs.com/t/expected-error-format-of-api-response/18441/2 "2020-12-21T16:47:42Z")
IIRC the best way to handle this sort of situation is overriding `extractErrors` in your Ember serializer. Per [the docs](https://api.emberjs.com/ember-data/3.23/classes/RESTSerializer/methods/extractErrors?anchor=extractErrors) for that method I think it (RESTSerializer just inherits this method from JSONSerializer) expects the errors array to be in JSON API format (though I do find it curious that JSONSerializer/RESTSerializer don’t do any formatting from other types, maybe there just aren’t enough conventions around that to adopt one).
So i think your options would be either match the JSON:API error format on your backend (example below) or use whatever format is easiest from your API and convert the error format in your serializer with `extractErrors`.
```auto
{
"errors": [
{
"detail": "This username is already taken!",
"source": {
"pointer": "data/attributes/username"
}
}, {
"detail": "Doesn't look like a valid email.",
"source": {
"pointer": "data/attributes/email"
}
}
]
}
```
---
### Author:  [@ChrizzDF](https://discuss.emberjs.com/u/ChrizzDF)
#### Post date: [January 3, 2021, 1:13pm UTC](https://discuss.emberjs.com/t/expected-error-format-of-api-response/18441/4 "2021-01-03T13:13:42Z")
Thank you for your quick reply! I wanted to avoid custom implementation in favour of basic functionality that should work out of the box, so I kept on trying and found the solution: **First** : The Backend was sending status code of 400, but Ember is expecting a 422 (unprocessable unit) in order to create an error of type `InvalidError`, so that it will be considered as model errors. **Second** : I had to send the errors from the Backend in the format you were also suggesting even though, according to the docs I understood that there should only be these two keys per error (`attribute`and `message`).
Anyway - Thanks for your help and have a good start into the new year! 🎉