QMS Chronicles

Productive Procrastination: Crafting My Own JSON API Response Standard

By Manny V | July 22, 2025 | #APIDesign #ProductivityHacks

As a solo developer building a complex system like a Queue Management System (QMS), every minute counts. The pressure to make tangible progress on core features is constant. Yet, sometimes, the most productive thing you can do is seemingly procrastinate on the main task by diving deep into a tangential problem. This often happens when a fundamental architectural decision feels "off," creating a nagging anxiety that hinders true progress. My latest detour falls squarely into this category: standardizing my JSON API response format.

This post will share my journey through the maze of API response standards, why existing solutions didn't quite fit, and how a moment of "productive procrastination" led to the creation of a simple, intuitive specification that allows my mind to rest easy and focus on building QFlowPro.com.

The Search for a Standard: Why It's Harder Than It Looks

When building an API, consistency is key. How your API communicates success, failure, data, and errors is crucial for both the frontend developers consuming it and for future maintainability. I embarked on a quest to find a widely accepted, simple standard for JSON API responses. My search quickly led me to a familiar watering hole for developers: Stack Overflow. Specifically, this question: Is there any standard for JSON API response format?

The answers highlighted a few options. One that frequently came up was JSend. JSend is a simple specification that dictates a JSON object must contain a status field, which can be "success", "fail", or "error". While conceptually simple, developing in Node.js with JavaScript, the response.status === "success" check felt a bit clunky. It's a string comparison, and in a language where booleans are so prevalent for conditional logic, it just didn't feel as idiomatic or clean as it could be.

Beyond JSend, other "standards" quickly became overly complicated. They introduced deep nesting, verbose meta-data, and complex rules that felt more like they were designed for large, distributed systems with very specific needs, rather than a straightforward REST API for a QMS. I wanted something that was easy to implement, easy to consume, and didn't add unnecessary overhead.

The Productive Procrastination: Birth of JSO-Spec

This is where the "productive procrastination" kicked in. Instead of forcing myself to adopt a standard that didn't quite feel right, I decided to distill the common sense and best practices I saw in the Stack Overflow community's discussions. Many developers, including the asker of the original question, intuitively gravitated towards a simpler approach: a top-level boolean success field. This allows for a much cleaner and more direct check in JavaScript: if (response.success).

This simple idea became the cornerstone of a new, minimalist specification I decided to formalize: JSO-Spec (JSON Standardized Output Specification). It's not about reinventing the wheel, but rather about formalizing a common, intuitive pattern that many developers already use or wish they could.

Introducing JSO-Spec: Simplicity and Clarity

JSO-Spec is designed to be incredibly straightforward, focusing on the essentials:

  • A top-level boolean field, success, indicating the outcome of the API call.
  • A message field for human-readable feedback.
  • A data field for successful responses, containing the actual payload.
  • An errors field for failed responses, containing an array of error objects.

You can explore the full specification and its rationale on GitHub:

As an added bonus, to make working with JSO-Spec even easier, I've also developed a lightweight JavaScript library that adheres to this specification. Aptly named JSO Client, it provides a convenient way to consume and interact with APIs built using JSO-Spec. You can find its source code on GitHub and install it via npm:

This specification ensures that every API response from my QMS backend will have a predictable and easy-to-parse structure, regardless of whether it's a success or a failure.

The Payoff: Peace of Mind and Renewed Focus

While spending time on this might seem like a diversion from building core queue management features, it has had an incredibly positive impact. My mind can now rest easy knowing that I'm following a clear, consistent, and intuitive specification for all my API interactions. This eliminates future guesswork, reduces potential bugs related to inconsistent responses, and makes both frontend and backend development significantly smoother.

I even shared my answer and the JSO-Spec on the original Stack Overflow question, contributing back to the community that inspired it:

This experience is a perfect example of "productive procrastination." Sometimes, taking a step back to address an underlying architectural discomfort, even if it delays immediate progress on a visible feature, ultimately leads to greater efficiency, clarity, and peace of mind in the long run. It's about building a solid foundation, not just stacking features on shaky ground.

The Path Forward: Back to Building QFlow Pro

With a clear API response standard in place, I can now continue focusing on the actual problems and implementing the UI workflow I had in mind for QFlowPro.com. This includes bringing the prototype features to full functionality and enhancing the user experience.

Stay tuned for more updates on the development journey!

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