---
id: meta-v1-security-and-errors
slug: /apis/meta-v1/security-and-errors
title: 'Security and Errors'
description: 'meta.v1 requires no authentication. This page covers that, and the error payload and status codes it returns.'
sidebar_label: 'Security and Errors'
sidebar_position: 3
tags: ['meta', 'authentication', 'errors', 'status-codes']
---

<!--
Originally extracted from DocSource/meta/meta.xml in Core, the source of the
in-product API help. That sync is retired and DocSource is frozen, so this page is
maintained here like any other. The corrections made during extraction are listed in
scripts/README.md.
-->

## Security {#security}

Unlike the other Agility APIs, the Meta API does not require authentication of any kind.

## Errors {#errors}

When a request results in an error, the response will have an HTTP status code in the range 400-500, and detailed information about the error will be returned in the response payload.

The response is an Error element, with an href attribute indicating the offending requested URL. The Message element contains a textual description of the error. Optional Exception elements may contain technical details about the cause of the error.

### Common Error Status Codes {#error-codes}

#### 401 Unauthorized {#error-401}

A 401 status code indicates that the request could not be authenticated. This may be caused by any one of these conditions:

- No credentials supplied to Basic Authentication, and no Authorization Ticket cookie sent with the request.
- An invalid username or password was supplied to Basic Authentication.
- An expired or invalid Authorization Ticket cookie sent with the request.

The typical course of action would be to include Basic Authorization credentials and resend the request.

#### 404 Invalid URL {#error-404}

A 404 status code indicates that there is no resource to retrieve at the requested URL. This error is usually caused by an invalid path.

#### 405 Method Not Allowed {#error-405}

A 405 status code indicates that the HTTP method used for the request is not valid at the requested URL. This will be returned for any method other than GET.

#### 500 Internal Server Error {#error-500}

A 500 status code indicates that an unexpected error occurred during the processing of the request. The response payload will contain Exception elements with specific information that will help technical diagnose the cause of the error. This could be due to:

- An environmental problem (e.g., the meta database is unavailable).
- An unhandled exception within the Agility software.