Add Error Handling spec (#424)

Author: imikushin

docs/_specs/error-handling/error-handling.md

@@ -0,0 +1,69 @@
+---
+layout: default
+---
+# Error handling for functions
+
+## Types of Errors
+### “User” / Input Errors
+
+These errors are detected **by functions** themselves (early in the function body) or **input schema validation**. When such error is detected, it makes no sense to proceed: if a function expects a string, but the input is a map, there’s nothing meaningful the function can do with it. 
+
+It is normal for a well implemented function to reject wrong input. Such errors mean that something is wrong with the **input data**. 
+
+
+### Function Errors
+
+These errors are thrown (usually **by the language runtime**) as a result of a logic error, such as NullPointerException or ArithmeticException (“divide by zero”). 
+
+Such error means that something is wrong with the **function**. 
+
+Examples:
+
+- external services failures
+- output validation errors
+- timeout error
+- other runtime exceptions
+
+
+### System / Infrastructure Errors
+
+These errors prevent function invocation from happening or communicating the results of the invocation back. 
+
+Such error means something is wrong with Dispatch itself or its underlying infrastructure. 
+
+
+## How errors are thrown
+
+User errors (thrown by function code) and function errors are language dependent. To reduce dependency on image-specific conventions, language standard errors should be used whenever possible. 
+
+It is the responsibility of language base-images to communicate those errors back in the output context.
+
+
+## Communicating errors
+
+Input and function errors should be recorded in the invocation output context and communicated back to the original caller. If a user API (via the API Gateway) call translated to a function invocation resulting in an input or function error, that error should be communicated back through that API using an appropriate HTTP status.
+
+System errors are logged to Dispatch system logs. If a system error is detected invoking a function, it should also be recorded in the output context. 
+
+
+### Error structure
+
+If an invocation resulted in an error, the output context will have a non-null `error` field. 
+For example (in YAML):
+
+    context:
+      error:
+        type: FunctionError
+        message: 'Something strange happened'
+        stacktrace: ['...', '...']
+      logs:
+        stdout: ['...', '...']
+        stderr: ['...', '...']
+    payload: ~
+
+Error fields:
+
+- `**type**` — one of `InputError`, `FunctionError` or `SystemError`
+- `**message**` — a string: the error’s message (every error comes with a message)
+- `**stacktrace**` — a list of strings, can be empty: a stack trace or traceback of the error
+