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VALIDATION_ERROR — Request body is malformed

Summary

Section titled “Summary”

The request was rejected at validation. The message always names the specific field and what’s wrong with it.

HTTP status

Section titled “HTTP status”

422 Unprocessable Entity. Standard envelope.

Example response

Section titled “Example response”
{
  "success": false,
  "error": {
    "code": "VALIDATION_ERROR",
    "message": "Field 'responses' must be a non-empty array of strings.",
    "request_id": "req_01HXJZK4ABCDEF",
    "doc_url": "https://docs.surveycoder.io/errors/validation-error"
  }
}

Why this happens

Section titled “Why this happens”
  • A required field is missing (question, responses).
  • A field has the wrong type (e.g. responses: "Tide..." instead of an array).
  • A string is over the size limit (most fields cap at 2,000 characters per verbatim).
  • An Idempotency-Key was reused with a different body.
  • A JSON parse error before our validator even ran (malformed JSON returns VALIDATION_ERROR with message: "Invalid JSON").

How to fix it

Section titled “How to fix it”
  1. Read the message — it’s specific. If it says responses must be a non-empty array, that’s the literal fix.
  2. Validate against the API reference request shape for the endpoint you called.
  3. Watch for accidental null values inside arrays — ["a", null, "b"] fails validation.
  4. If you got this on an idempotency retry, you’re reusing a key with a changed body. Use a fresh UUID.
Section titled “Related”