Remove a label from an issue: Clarify 404 status code

[david-allison]

Code of Conduct

• I have read and agree to the GitHub Docs project's Code of Conduct

What article on docs.github.com is affected?

https://docs.github.com/en/rest/issues/labels?apiVersion=2022-11-28#remove-a-label-from-an-issue

What part(s) of the article would you like to see updated?

It is unclear whether a 404 is generated because:

1. The label does not exist on the Pull Request/Issue
   • Expected error most people will want to handle
2. The label is not defined on the repo
   • Catastrophic logic error

Additional information

Relevant docs

This endpoint returns a 404 Not Found status if the label does not exist.

---

404	Resource not found

[welcome]

Thanks for opening this issue. A GitHub docs team member should be by to give feedback soon. In the meantime, please check out the contributing guidelines.

[nguyenalex836]

@david-allison Thank you for raising this issue! I'll get this triaged for review ✨ Our team will provide feedback regarding the best next steps for this issue - thanks for your patience! 💛

[github-actions]

Thanks for opening an issue! We've triaged this issue for technical review by a subject matter expert 👀

[nguyenalex836]

@david-allison Thank you so much for your patience while our SME team reviewed! 💛 After reviewing, our SME team provided the following response:

We return a 404 error if the specified repository or issue does not exist, or if the issue does not have the requested label attached. This behavior is what you would expect from an API when removing labels from an issue. If a user wants to check whether a label exists on a repository, they can try fetching that specific label using the following endpoint. If this request returns a 404 error, it means that the label does not exist in the repository.

We hope this clarifies the 404 status - please let us know if you have any questions ✨

[david-allison]

@nguyenalex836 The aim of this issue was to get the documentation improved, so future readers don't need to do the (quick) investigation which I needed to do.

Is the documentation likely to be fixed, or will this be treated as a support ticket?

[nguyenalex836]

@david-allison Apologies! I should have asked in my previous response - given the information our SMEs provided, what suggestions do you have for updating the documentation? Would you be willing to submit a PR for those updates? 💛

[david-allison]

No. I posted this issue so a SME would submit a PR

[nguyenalex836]

Thanks @david-allison! We've filed an issue to have this fixed internally 💛

[docs-bot]

Thank you for opening this issue! Updates to this documentation must be made internally. I have copied your issue to an internal issue, so I will close this issue.