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2026-08-28-web-route-public-exception

title: "A web route no longer answers the caller with the exception text" affects: dartway_serverpod_core_server: "0.12.0"​

Who is affected​

A project with web routes going through DwWebServerLogger.handleWithExceptions — webhooks, callbacks, anything a foreign system calls.

handleWithExceptions used to catch everything and write e.toString() into the response body. An arbitrary exception carries what it carries: a database error carries its query, a null check carries a file path. All of it was written for us, and whoever called a webhook is not somebody we authenticated. The 500 looked ordinary from the outside, so nothing ever drew attention to what had been sent with it.

Now everything answers with a fixed sentence and 500; the real text goes to the alert and the DwWebServerLog row. Nothing breaks, and the change is silent — which is why this note exists: a caller that was relying on the message is now getting the fixed sentence instead, and nobody on this side will see that happen.

What to change​

Go through the routes and find every refusal that was meant for the caller — a missing parameter, a bad signature, an unknown id. Each of those becomes a DwPublicWebException, whose message and status code go out verbatim and which raises no alert, because a route refusing on its own terms is not an incident:

- throw Exception('orderId is required');
+ throw const DwPublicWebException('orderId is required');

- throw Exception('unknown signature');
+ throw const DwPublicWebException('unknown signature', statusCode: 401);

Leave everything else as it is. An unexpected failure answering with a fixed sentence is the point of the change, not a regression.

How to check​

Call each route with the input that makes it refuse, and read the response body: a refusal you meant the caller to see says what it always said; anything else says the fixed sentence, and the detail is in the alert and the DwWebServerLog row.

While there: a secret nested inside a list used to reach the log row intact — the sanitiser walked maps and stopped. It is fixed, and no project action is needed, but a log row written before this may still hold one.