Initial Services page load triggers a backend exception

[gregorydlogan]

Upon first load of the services tab, I'm seeing a request to http://tenant-b.localtest.me/admin-ng/services/services.json?limit=50&offset=0&sort=date:DESC, which throws a big ugly stack trace beginning with

2025-03-07 11:49:26,214 | WARN  | (ServicesEndpoint:180) - Failed to sort services collection.                                                
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Can't sort services by date.                                                                              
        at org.opencastproject.adminui.endpoint.ServicesEndpoint$ServiceStatisticsComparator.<init>(ServicesEndpoint.java:369) ~[?:?]         
        at org.opencastproject.adminui.endpoint.ServicesEndpoint.getServices(ServicesEndpoint.java:178) ~[?:?]                                

Now, the backend shouldn't be throwing that exception like that, but the query the admin ui is sending is also wrong/doesn't make sense, so I'm filing this in both :)

[gregorydlogan]

Upon looking at the backend, we're logging like that since we don't define anything other than a HTTP 200 with a list of services as a response. In the case of a bad sorting param, the backend just ignores the sort.

So, what do we want to do? Should we HTTP 400 upon an invalid sort type, necessitating handling that in the UI? Or do we just fix the UI side of things since there shouldn't be a way of querying invalid types via the UI? I would argue if you're doing it wrong with a direct API call with curl or something then PEBKAC.

[Arnei]

I think it would be nice to get a Bad Request` response if my request contains invalid parameters. Iirc other admin ui endpoints (events, series) are doing exactly that and it helps in finding bugs more quickly.

Also the ui side of things might be fixed by #1121. Have not tested that though.