Is there any way to suppress detailed error messages in Jira REST API Responses?

[Jongho Jung]

Hello,

I'd like to ask your help about a configuration change or guidance regarding error handling in our Jira Data Center environment.

Currently, when we send a REST API request with an invalid JQL query, the response includes detailed error messages like the following:

<<<Request>>>

curl ^"https://a........../rest/api/latest/search?jql=1234'\^%\^20\~\^%\^20\^%\^22\^%\^27\^%\^22\^&fields=summary\^%\^2Cissuetype\^%\^2Ccomment\^%\^2Cparent\^%\^2Cstatus\^&startAt=0\^&maxResults=20\^" ^
-H ^"accept: application/json^" ^
-H ^"accept-language: ko,en;q=0.9,en-US;q=0.8^" ^
-b ^"_ga=GA1.1.609629253.1743983912; hkksnm=58; ntfa=6ecd9b81b3d75acde0b109c6f4327558cf085c8fb53ad069be83d8a63ab04d54; nrnhkd=b21a6634cba0505bbcf039a96c2969bf086a688673932ac1bf2a5f97b5f60160278b1e71b2da8d7f8ae62b0da002a0a7291d0bd60c6398aaab5b5303df64cc22265d5280547b02d85d34c6a195ca3b8924dd7c906bdbdbed578239a14f45074bdf65fa3026b8391aaf90e1979bbf8c3eaa9d557fdde9aa034bf909b784c7ebc9dd004d8c447aaebe1174482a8580724b0d7626da81; nrnhkuio=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; SCOUTER=x2k8c3esqj2csb; ROUTEID=.node1; crowd.token_key=y8WcZ7mnPlLv2crc-x5NbAAAAAAAAgABY3Jvd2RhZG1pbg; JSESSIONID=A3929F863576F6135EECCF5A2607205D.node1; atlassian.xsrf.token=BMGK-6F21-MTQD-19C7_43edba90581d46bd808984349034bb02ad98fbd2_lin; ajs_user_id=59f026f12372e88b4d22940a1364ced10a8efd59; ajs_anonymous_id=9361c437-0cda-46d7-bf4a-5364cc18b25f; _ga_4PWZCRCGZM=GS1.1.1744184560.13.1.1744184579.0.0.0; _ga_YJWKD5S59E=GS1.1.1744182990.1.1.1744185289.0.0.0^" ^
-H ^"priority: u=1, i^" ^
-H ^"referer: https://..................................................\^" ^
-H ^"sec-ch-ua: ^^"Microsoft Edge^^";v=^^"135^^", ^^"Not-A.Brand^^";v=^^"8^^", ^^"Chromium^^";v=^^"135^^"^" ^
-H ^"sec-ch-ua-mobile: ?1^" ^
-H ^"sec-ch-ua-platform: ^^"Android^^"^" ^
-H ^"sec-fetch-dest: empty^" ^
-H ^"sec-fetch-mode: cors^" ^
-H ^"sec-fetch-site: same-origin^" ^
-H ^"user-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 6.0; Nexus 5 Build/MRA58N) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/135.0.0.0 Mobile Safari/537.36 Edg/135.0.0.0^" ^
-H ^"x-requested-with: XMLHttpRequest^"

<<<Response>>>

{
"errorMessages": [
"Error in the JQL Query: Expecting operator but got ' ~ \"'. The valid operators are '=', '!=', '<', '>', '<=', '>=', '~', '!~', 'IN', 'NOT IN', 'IS' and 'IS NOT'. (line 1, character 5)"
],
"errors": {}
}

For security and usability reasons, we would like to suppress these detailed error messages and instead return a more generic error response (e.g., "Invalid request").

Thank you for your help.

[Tuncay Senturk]

Hi @Jongho Jung 

The REST API response for invalid JQL queries includes detailed syntax error messages by default. There is no setting to globally suppress or customize these error messages.

You can use a reverse proxy filter to intercept API responses with these status codes and a body containing "errorMessages" etc and replace the body with a custom message like "Invalid request".