🐛 Fix: Prevent JSONDecodeError from masking HTTP errors in non-JSON responses

[ivanjun10r]

📋 Summary

Resolves #1 where 504 Gateway Timeout, 502 Bad Gateway, and other infrastructure errors would throw JSONDecodeError instead of showing the actual HTTP error, making debugging extremely difficult in production environments.

🔍 Problem Description

When HTTP errors occurred with non-JSON responses (empty bodies, HTML error pages, plain text), the client would attempt to parse response.json() and fail with:

requests.exceptions.JSONDecodeError: Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0)

This masked the original HTTP errors, preventing proper error handling and monitoring.

💡 Solution

Refactored error handling in BaseRequest._do_request() with two new helper methods following Clean Code principles:

• _build_error_message() - Constructs detailed error messages with proper context
• _extract_response_content() - Safely extracts response content with JSON/text fallback

🔧 Changes Made

Code Changes:

• ✅ Refactored BaseRequest._do_request() error handling
• ✅ Added _build_error_message() method with comprehensive documentation
• ✅ Added _extract_response_content() method with safe JSON parsing
• ✅ Maintained backward compatibility with existing JSON error responses
• ✅ Updated HISTORY.rst with detailed changelog

Test Coverage:

• ✅ Added 10 comprehensive test cases in ErrorHandlingTestCase
• ✅ Covered all error scenarios: 504, 502, empty responses, HTML pages
• ✅ Integration tests for end-to-end error handling
• ✅ Regression tests to ensure JSON responses still work

🔗 Related Issues

Fixes #1

📝 Testing Instructions

# Clone and setup
git checkout bugfix/1-json-decode-error
pyenv activate api_pgd_env

# Run specific error handling tests
python -m pytest tests/test_client.py::ErrorHandlingTestCase -v

# Run all tests to ensure no regressions
python -m pytest tests/test_client.py -v

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