refactor: issue2551289. invalid REST Accept header stops request Sending a POST, PUT (maybe PATCH) with an accept header that is not application/json or xml (if enabled) used to complete the request before throwing a 406 error. This was wrong. Now it reports an error without dispatching/processing the requested transaction. This is the first of a series of refactors of the dispatch method to make it faster and more readable by using return early pattern and extracting methods from the code. changes: The following now return 406 errors not 400 errors invalid version specified with @apiver in URL. invalid version specified with @apiver in payload body invalid version specified in accept headers as application/vnd.roundup.test-vz+json or version property Parsing the accept header returns a 400 when presented with a parameter without an = sign or other parse error. They used to return a 406 which is wrong since the header is malformed rather than having a value I can't respond to. Some error messages were made clearer. Results in the case of an error are proper json error object rather than text/plain strings. New test added for testdetermine_output_formatBadAccept that test the new method using the same test cases as for testDispatchBadAccept. I intend to extend the test coverage for determine_output_format to cover more cases. This should be a faster unit test than for dispatch. Removed .lower() calls for accept_mime_type as the input values are taken from the values in the __accepted_content_type dict which only has lower case values.

--- a/CHANGES.txt	Sat Dec 07 17:34:06 2024 -0500
+++ b/CHANGES.txt	Sun Dec 08 01:09:34 2024 -0500
@@ -33,6 +33,9 @@
 - issue2551372 - Better document necessary headers for REST and fix
   logging to log missing Origin header (Ralf Schlatterbeck with
   suggestions on documentation by John Rouillard)
+- issue2551289 - Invalid REST Accept header with post/put performs
+  change before returning 406. Error before making any changes to the
+  db if we can't respond with requested format. (John Rouillard)
 
 Features: