How to Debug API Issues

Diagnose and fix NHL API connection problems.

Problem

You’re experiencing errors or timeouts when fetching NHL data.

Common Issues

Connection timeout

Symptoms: “Connection timeout” error after 10-15 seconds.

Solutions:

# Increase timeout
export NHL_SCRABBLE_API_TIMEOUT=60
nhl-scrabble analyze --verbose

# Check network connection
ping api-web.nhle.com

# Try with retries
export NHL_SCRABBLE_API_RETRIES=10

404 errors

Symptoms: “Team not found” or “404 Not Found” errors.

Solutions:

  • NHL API may have changed endpoints

  • Team abbreviation may be wrong

  • Check NHL API status: https://www.nhl.com/info/api-status

Rate limiting

Symptoms: Requests failing intermittently, “429 Too Many Requests”.

Solutions:

# Increase delay between requests
export NHL_SCRABBLE_RATE_LIMIT_DELAY=1.0  # 1 second delay
nhl-scrabble analyze

Invalid JSON

Symptoms: “JSON decode error” messages.

Solutions:

# Enable verbose logging to see response
nhl-scrabble analyze --verbose --no-cache

# Clear cache in case of corrupted data
nhl-scrabble analyze --clear-cache

Debugging workflow

  1. Enable verbose logging:

nhl-scrabble analyze --verbose
  1. Check API directly:

curl -v https://api-web.nhle.com/v1/standings/now
  1. Test with retries:

export NHL_SCRABBLE_API_RETRIES=10
export NHL_SCRABBLE_API_TIMEOUT=60
nhl-scrabble analyze --verbose --no-cache
  1. Check logs for specific error messages