fix(api): return 503 status when health check detects errors

[Rajeevydvv]

Bug Fix

Related Feature:
fix/health-check-status

Changes:

The /api/health endpoint previously returned HTTP 200 with
status: "healthy" even when an internal error occurred in the
catch block. This means monitoring systems, load balancers, and
CI/CD pipelines would always see a healthy service — even when
something was actually failing.

Before:

} catch (error) {
    logger.error('Health check error:', error);
    res.json({
        status: 'healthy',  // ❌ misleading — error occurred

After:

} catch (error) {
    logger.error('Health check error:', error);
    res.status(503).json({
        status: 'degraded',  // ✅ accurately reflects error state

Why this matters:

• Load balancers rely on non-200 responses to detect and route
  around degraded instances
• Monitoring systems (Prometheus, Datadog, etc.) use HTTP status
  codes to trigger alerts — a 200 masks real failures silently
• This is a 2-line change with zero impact on the happy path

This is a code-only change with no impact on documentation
or site functionality.

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[qodo-code-review]

Review Summary by Qodo

Return 503 status on health check errors

🐞 Bug fix

Walkthroughs

Description

• Return HTTP 503 with degraded status when health check encounters errors
• Ensures monitoring systems and load balancers detect unhealthy instances
• Fix prevents silent failures masked by misleading 200 responses
• Whitespace cleanup throughout file for consistency

Diagram

flowchart LR
  HC["Health Check Endpoint"]
  TRY["Try Block"]
  CATCH["Catch Block"]
  SUCCESS["200 OK - healthy"]
  FAILURE["503 Service Unavailable - degraded"]
  HC --> TRY
  HC --> CATCH
  TRY --> SUCCESS
  CATCH --> FAILURE

Loading

File Changes

1. api/server.js 🐞 Bug fix +24/-24

Health check error handling and whitespace cleanup

• Changed health check error response from HTTP 200 to 503 status code
• Updated error response status field from 'healthy' to 'degraded'
• Removed trailing whitespace throughout file for code consistency
• No functional changes to happy path or other endpoints

api/server.js

---

[qodo-code-review]

Code Review by Qodo

🐞 Bugs (0) 📘 Rule violations (0) 📎 Requirement gaps (0)

Great, no issues found!

Qodo reviewed your code and found no material issues that require review