Should TryBackend be used by default in the code examples?

[valenterry]

STTP is agnostic to the backends used. However, as a Scala library, I think it should favor returning Try (or Either) over throwing exceptions by default in the code examples / documentation (unless explicitly using a yolo-backend like quick). This would be more consistent with the rest of the API that returns Either already (e.g. when handling the response). Currently the DefaultSyncBackend is used in the examples which throws exceptions.

If someone wants to opt into throwing exceptions, they can easily do that.

[adamw]

Ah, error handling :) Not an easy subject, with as many opinions as there are users ;)

Getting back a 400/500 response is different from a connection error; in case of a non-2xx response, the request was still "successful", in the sense that it was sent without problems. However, connection exceptions can be viewed as "panics" as something is wrong in the networking layer. That is to say, there exists a somewhat consistent approach to error handling which allows for both Eithers and exceptions to co-exist. See also https://ox.softwaremill.com/latest/basics/error-handling.html for a discussion.

As to what should be the default: I'd stay with the current exception-on-connection-error, as this is often the case "correct" choice and makes the examples simpler, but maybe adding a section to https://sttp.softwaremill.com/en/latest/responses/exceptions.html ?