API returns invalid JSON for some branches

[Jelmer Vernooij]

$ curl https://launchpad.net/~eydev/php-ssh2/trunk

Returns a valid branch page in HTML.

However:

$ curl -D/dev/stdout -H 'Accept: application/json' https://api.launchpad.net/devel/~eydev/php-ssh2/trunk
HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
...
Object: <lp.systemhomes.WebServiceApplication object at 0x7f6be50abdd0>, name: u'~eydev'

For other branches, I do get back a valid JSON response with this curl command.

[Michael Kogan (michael-kogan)]

Happens to me with a suspended user as well:

$ curl -H 'Accept: application/json' https://api.launchpad.net/1.0/~9d9
u'User is suspended: ~9d9'

This breaks utilities like https://github.com/johnf/github-issue-importer as the response cannot be parsed.

[William Grant (wgrant)]

Both of those are error responses (a 404 for the branch, and a 410 for the user), with Content-Type: text/plain. It isn't correct to try to parse them as if they were JSON.

[Jelmer Vernooij (jelmer)]

The issue Michael mentions is unrelated to the one I'm seeing.

Why am I getting back a 404 on the API side even if the branch exists?

If a 404 is the correct response here, then why is there no API rest endpoint for this branch? And related, what does the error message "Object: <lp.systemhomes.WebServiceApplication object at 0x7f6be50abdd0>, name: u'~eydev'" mean?