Errors

🛠️

Public Beta Feature

This documentation covers a feature currently in Public Beta. Access is available to anyone interested in building personalized experiences for their end-users.

This feature is subject to the Personalization API (Self-Service) Public Beta End user License Agreement 📄.

As much as possible, Foursquare attempts to use appropriate HTTP status codes to indicate the general class of problem, and this status code is repeated in the code section of the meta response.

ResponseCodeDescription
Bad Request400Any case where a parameter is invalid, or a required parameter is missing. This includes the case where no OAuth token is provided and the case where a resource ID is specified incorrectly in a path.
Unauthorized401The OAuth token was provided but was invalid.
Forbidden403The requested information cannot be viewed by the acting user, for example, because they are not friends with the user whose data they are trying to read. It could also indicate privileges or access has been revoked.
Not Found404Endpoint does not exist.
Method Not Allowed405Attempting to use POST with a GET-only endpoint, or vice-versa.
Conflict409The request could not be completed as it is. Use the information included in the response to modify the request and retry.
Internal Server Error500Foursquare’s servers are unhappy. There is either a bug on our side or there is an outage. The request is probably valid but needs to be retried later.

Additional details are provided in the errorType field of the response. It should be one of the following.

errorTypeStatus CodeExplanation
invalid_auth401OAuth token was not provided or was invalid.
param_error400A required parameter was missing or a parameter was malformed. This is also used if the resource ID in the path is incorrect.
endpoint_error404The requested path does not exist.
not_authorized403Although authentication succeeded, the acting user is not allowed to see this information due to privacy restrictions.
rate_limit_exceeded403Rate limit for this hour exceeded.
quota_exceeded429Daily call quota exceeded.
deprecated200Something about this request is using deprecated functionality, or the response format may be about to change.
server_errorVariesServer is currently experiencing issues.

Errors will usually include an errorDetail field with additional information about what went wrong, intended for the developer. In some cases, the server may include an errorMessage, which is a localized string intended for the client to display back to the user directly.