In GWT, when is the AsyncCallback:onFailure method called in a json-p request using JsonpRequestBuilder - gwt

Question

I've been implementing a GWT application that calls a REST-service (which we're also developing). When the REST-service returns anything with a HTTP-status other than 200 I would expect the onFailure method of AsyncCallback to be called. However I can't get this to happen.
To test it further I created a test GWT app and a test servlet. The part of the GWT app that calls the service looks like this:
JsonpRequestBuilder jsonp = new JsonpRequestBuilder();
jsonp.setCallbackParam("_jsonp");
jsonp.setFailureCallbackParam("_jsonp_failure");
jsonp.requestObject(url, new AsyncCallback<JavaScriptObject>()
{
#Override
public void onFailure(Throwable caught)
{
Window.alert("Failure: " + caught.getMessage());
}
#Override
public void onSuccess(JavaScriptObject result)
{
Window.alert("Success");
}
});
The servlet-code looks like this:
public class MyRestServlet extends HttpServlet
{
protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest httpServletRequest, HttpServletResponse httpServletResponse) throws ServletException, IOException
{
String padding = httpServletRequest.getParameter("_jsonp_failure");
httpServletResponse.setContentType("application/x+javascript");
httpServletResponse.setStatus(500);
PrintWriter out = httpServletResponse.getWriter();
out.println(padding + "({\"some\":\"json\"});");
out.close();
}
}
OnFailure eventually gets called when the request times out, but I would expect it to be called as soon as the http response arrives(if it's a failure). I guess there is something I haven't understood and I would really appreciate to get some help with this.
Thanks

Answer 1

According to HTML5, if there's an error loading the script, an error event should be dispatched, and GWT doesn't listen for it (because almost no browser actually fires it AFAICT).
For best browser compatibility, you'd better always send a 200 status, but then call the failure callback (or in other words, return an error state/condition, rather than throw an exception).
Also, the argument to the failure callback is expected to be a string (will be the message of the exception).

Answer 2

From the server code where you call the REST service, throw an exception yourself if the response is something other than 200 (by writing code to check the response yourself). This way it will persist to the client side as an error and onFailure will be called in client side.
In GWT's mind currently nothing went wrong. It sent a request, got some result did not matter what, the call was successful. It does call the onFailure on a timeout because something did go wrong with the request "physically", and GWT persisted the exception to the client side as a failure.