Question: For a public facing web API(send HTTP Get/Post requests, get JSON/XML data back), how should parameters be handled that are either misspelled or are extra.It seems to me that if the incorrect parameters are ignored, an error in the caller's code may go unnoticed since they would be getting back a valid result. This may be especially true in situations where it wouldn't be obvious by looking at the results returned.I am referring to optional parameters only. Obviously if a required parameter is misspelled, then the parameter will be considered missing and an error will be returned.As an example, the Place Search API call has four required parameters(location,radius,sensor and key) and several optional parameters(types is one of them).I can run these commands(with an API key) and get back valid results:curl https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/search/json?location=45.47554,-122.794189&radius=500&sensor=false&key=<api_key>&type=bakerycurl https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/search/json?location=45.47554,-122.794189&radius=500&sensor=false&key=<api_key>&types=bakeryThe first command has the types parameter in the singular form which is an invalid key name. The API ignores that parameter and returns all types of entities. In this case the error is obvious, but there may be times(and other API calls) where it won't be.
How should a web API handle misspelled/extra parameters?
api;error handling