Interpreting Amazon SQS JSON API responses

In response to an action request, Amazon SQS returns a JSON data structure that contains the results of the request. For more information, see the individual actions in the Amazon Simple Queue Service API Reference and Amazon SQS Amazon JSON protocol FAQs.

Successful JSON response structure

If the request is successful, the main response element is x-amzn-RequestId, which contains the Universal Unique Identifier (UUID) of the request, as well as other appended response field(s). For example, the following CreateQueue response contains the QueueUrl field, which, in turn, contains the URL of the created queue.

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
x-amzn-RequestId: <requestId>
Content-Length: <PayloadSizeBytes>
Date: <Date>
Content-Type: application/x-amz-json-1.0
{
    "QueueUrl":"https://sqs.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/111122223333/MyQueue"
}

JSON error response structure

If a request is unsuccessful, Amazon SQS returns the main response, including the HTTP header and the body.

In the HTTP header, x-amzn-RequestId contains the UUID of the request. x-amzn-query-error contains two pieces of information: the type of error, and whether the error was a producer or consumer error.

In the response body, "__type" indicates other error details, and Message indicates the error condition in a readable format.

The following is an example error response in JSON format:

HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request
x-amzn-RequestId: 66916324-67ca-54bb-a410-3f567a7a0571
x-amzn-query-error: AWS.SimpleQueueService.NonExistentQueue;Sender
Content-Length: <PayloadSizeBytes>
Date: <Date>
Content-Type: application/x-amz-json-1.0
{
    "__type": "com.amazonaws.sqs#QueueDoesNotExist",
    "message": "The specified queue does not exist."
}