Consistent API error messages #134

Hello,

Recently we discussed in the Topcoder Community, and people have different opinions regarding errors messages.

From your best practices:

Response messages must be self-descriptive. A good error message response might look something like this:

// (1)
{
    "code": 1234,
    "message" : "Something bad happened",
    "description" : "More details"
}

or for validation errors:

// (2)
{
    "code" : 2314,
    "message" : "Validation Failed",
    "errors" : [
        {
            "code" : 1233,
            "field" : "email",
            "message" : "Invalid email"
        },
        {
            "code" : 1234,
            "field" : "password",
            "message" : "No password provided"
        }
      ]
}

Based on my understanding, (1) schema can be used as a general error format, and (2) schema can be used for a specific situation (validation errors in this case).
That means error responses don't have to have the exact format with the same properties.
Some developers insist that all error responses should be consistent and be the same.

Could you clarify it according to your best practices in this project?