Getting Internal Server Errors (500) now and then when using the API

MusicBrainz Development
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1

Hello,

I just started using the MusicBrainz API which is quite great! I also registered an account (free until I reach 500$ and more revenue per year).

Most of the time it works, but in 1 hour of coding it happened about 15 times that I get a 500 error for a completely valid request. After rerunning the request, everything works just fine.

Is this known behavior or should I provide you with example links to track down the issue? What can I do in order to avoid this?

And as another option: Is it ok for people with revenue under 500$/year to install the dump from the following link to my server (and update it every night):

https://musicbrainz.org/doc/MusicBrainz_Database/Download#The_Basics

If I understood correctly, the LiveData feed if restricted to non commercial users only (even if revenue is under 500$/year), right? -> https://musicbrainz.org/doc/Live_Data_Feed

Thanks in advance!

Bye The_Unknown

2

I cannot comment on cause or solution, but I can confirm I’ve seen this same behaviour several times over the last few days, only happens to the odd request, resubmit a second later and it returns 200.

3

The_Unkown:

Hi!

You should know that even if you are not generating $500 in revenue yet, you should have a commercial account with us. We’d like to know who everyone is so we can be in periodic contact. What username did you sign up with?

And the Live Data Feed is restricted to non-commercial users or commercial users who are paying us $100/month – generally speaking. But, we’d like to know about your case and see what sort of arrangement we can come to.

Thanks!

4

It could be useful to provide us:

  • actual IP(s) you are using
  • exact requests you are making
  • time/day
  • exact errors you get
  • rate of your requests

If you can, join us on MetaBrainz IRC channel, so we can try to find where is the issue.

1 Like
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@rob

Don’t worry, I already have an account and already have had contact with Elizabeth concerning the details. I just use this “The_Unknown” account which has a different username than the one I registered for a commercial account, since the latter one is named by my company name.

The account I’m writing this thread from is just for public actions like forum questions and I just don’t want that my company name would get linked with forum threads :wink:

@Zas

I don’t use IRC and am not familiar with that. But I don’t want to share my (static) IP with the public, so is there any option that I can contact you by mail or private message (didn’t find such a function in the forum, yet)?

6

Send an email to zas at metabrainz dot org

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Hi TheUnknown1!
This is Elizabeth, could you let me know what your product is? Thank you!

8

You got mail :slight_smile:

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Thank you @The_Unknown! :slight_smile:

10

@Zas: Any progress on that?

In addition, I got a 503 with RetryAfter = 0 and no rate limit broken several times (happened very iften the last days).

11

503s situation should have improved now, but the 500 error issue is another one, we are currently investigating. I will answer you soon.

1 Like
12

ok, great, thank you.

13

Some processes got stuck on one of our servers (unclear why at the moment) and had to be restarted. The issue seems to be fixed now. Thanks for reporting it.

14

OK, good to hear. Maybe you find the issue causing the problem.

15

Is there any list of current status codes in use?

I would just like to know so i am able to best handle them in code, ex 503 err wait for the retry time…
404 error, check my connection to the net… 500 error??? ect…

16

Yes, that would be cool.

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Awesome, but from the list we don’t know which of the different statuses are possibly returned by the api.

19

Exactly, i know the codes, only knowing what code is sent by the server and why helps how to determine how to best handle things